Friday fantasies

Don't forget to check the IPKat's Forthcoming Events listings.  There are quite a few new additions -- and lots of stimulating subjects for the discerning IP enthusiast (for the non-discerning enthusiast, refreshments are generally provided).  

"What happens to works when they fall into the public domain?"  This question is also the title of a seminar, organised by the 1709 Blog and kindly hosted by the IPKat's friends at Olswang LLP, at which the thoroughly engaging Professor Paul J. Heald, of the University of Georgia Law School, presents some of his thoughts and -- more importantly -- the fruits of some of his own research.

Since this seminar is coming up very soon, the Kat is helping the 1709 Blog to spread the word.  The date: Wednesday 23 March; venue, the lovely, airy room up on the sixth floor of 90 High Holborn, London.  Registration 5pm. Kick-off 5.30pm.  Close of play, following questions and discussions, 7pm.  Refreshments will be provided.  Cost: nothing, it's free. To register, email the IPKat here and let him know (using the subject line 'Heald Reg').

Turkey ban.  Earlier this week the IPKat reported that he, together with all the other bloggers who use Google's Blogspot platform, had been cut off from some of his favourite readers in that lovely country.  He very much hopes that the situation will soon improve -- and that some of the more belligerent members of the rights-owning community will not be calling for the blanket ban on access, in response to a complaint against an individual user of an online blogging facility, to be more widely introduced.  Merpel wonders if there isn't a human rights issue here, in that the right of ordinary Turkish folk to read the intellectual property weblog of their choice has been curtailed through a disproportionate response to an allegation of IP infringement in a dispute to which none of the fictitious felines is party.

Why not dispense with printed
publications altogether and
give the work back to scribes?

Around the journals.  The online version of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice (JIPLP) has already been published in full; subscribers can feast on it already, and everyone can check the contents list and read the Editorial, "WIPO and the cobbler's children" (contents and editorial here),  Volume 11(3) of the Bio-Science Law Review is out too.  As befits this much-loved, idiosyncratic title, it doesn't seem to be graced with a year of publication, though it has some very timely and topical features. Details of the BioSLR can be found here.  Finally, the Thirty-Sixth Volume of the Proceedings of the Hungarian Group of the AIPPI (2010) have been published. Are there any Hungarians reading this?  If so, the IPKat is sending you a message: this is the 21st century -- but your publication doesn't have a website and isn't available online.  If you want people to read, think about and discuss the very good papers that this series has provided for many years now, forget it.  No-one can find these works if they are not on the internet.  Come to think of it, you can't even find these proceedings on the library shelf, since there's no writing on the spine to say what they are. It's not even a question of money -- it's far cheaper to prepare these articles as pdf files than it is to have them printed, posted and mainly thrown away by most of their recipients.  Please, please, please! says the Kat, put next year's Proceedings online and forget the funny little books you send out.  The social media will spread the word and you'll be read by people who are actually looking for your work.

Around the blogs.  Watching the Connectives (here) is not the normal sort of pile'em up and register'em cheap IP blog that the IPKat so often reports on.  Rather, it's described as "a lawyer's views on telecoms and technology", the lawyer in question being the eminent, charming and eminently charming Rob Bratby (Olswang LLP).  Rob covers topics which the IPKat likes to think of as close neighbours of intellectual property, such as Ofcom regulation, mobile and digital money and commercial activity in telecoms and technology.  Another site worthy of note this week, though it's not actually a blog, is law firm Taylor Wessing's entertaining IP Myths site (here).  Apart from the fact that it lists some of the IPKat's favourite IP myths, the IPKat has learned from his moles in TW that much of its content was sent in by readers of this weblog.  If you have any fresh myths, don't forget to let them know.

Turning up, disguised as
a trade mark, Merpel forgot
she was gate-crashing
a patent conference

MIP Forum.  Via a succession of emails in the past week or so, the IPKat has been gratified to learn that some of his friends from outside the UK will be travelling to London for Managing Intellectual Property magazine's first International Patent Forum (details here) on 5 and 6 April.

Since the venue is just over the road from his office, he may just try to sneak in to one of the coffee sessions together with the illustrious Merpel, disguised as a human, and say a quick "hello".  If you see either of them there, please don't give the game away!