Wednesday whimsies

Good news at last!  The World Intellectual Property Database (WIPD) website is no longer as deceptively lookalike as it was yesterday (on the uncanny resemblance of this site to the World Intellectual Property Organization's site, see the IPKat's recent posts here and earlier).  If you take a look here, you can see that it now sports the logo on the right.  The new logo actually looks not unlike a black-and-white version of the lettering of the WIPR (World Intellectual Property Review), but that's another subject and not one that the IPKat is about to chase up.  Anyway, the IPKat is hugely relieved that the risk of confusion and deception has been reduced.

On the subject of rogue websites, the IPKat has received some very thoughtful comments and even a couple of entries in response to yesterday's competition -- which remains open till 6 February.  Do take the opportunity to imagine yourself to be advising a United Nations agency -- and to win a copy of Alexander Tsoutsanis's new book Trade Mark Registrations in Bad Faith, which would cost you £125 if you had to buy it yourself!

Komodo Dragon

Around the blogs. PatLit's latest PCC Page, on the new, versatile Patents County Court for England and Wales ("Snails and Octopuses", here) looks further at the dynamics of delay. There's a new blog on the block, this being the splendidly-named IP Komodo Dragon (interests: "eating people" and "intellectual property"). Providing an elegantly-written commentary on IP in Indonesia, this blog is not connected with the excellent IP Dragon, and readers should not be confused by it -- though that's not to say that the trade mark law of a well-known European country beginning with "G" does not contain a specific rule to govern the situation in which a junior mark consists of two words which are identical to the senior mark, where those words are separated in the junior mark by a third word which, while not found in the senior mark, is a word which, while unusual and striking in its appearance, contains a conceptual link to the second of the two words which comprise the senior mark ...

The IPKat has learned from Rita Matulionyte (Institut für Rechtsinformatik, Leibniz Universität Hanover) that a group of European academics released last week an opinion on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Says Rita, this opinion identifies the most critical aspects of ACTA and invites European and national institutions to consider it carefully before ratifying the Agreement or withholding consent. The opinion is open for signatures until 7 February 2011, when it will be submitted to the European Parliament and other relevant European and national institutions [Merpel's puzzling a little bit over the word "relevant", which she sometimes has difficulty understanding when it comes so close to the words "European Parliament" ...].  By the way, does anyone know why it's Hannover in German but Hanover in English? Was this an early example of textese?