"Win the game, or lose the plot?"

Messrs Richards and Jagger, carefully restored to their
pristine condition thanks to Botox.  Their composing
methods, as described in Keith Richards' autobiography
Life, were the subject of close scrutiny at the seminar

"Win the game, or lose the plot?", Wednesday's seminar on plots, themes, formats and other content which may --or may not -- be IP-protected, provided a thought-provoking agenda for the lively group of intellectual property owners, advisers and enthusiasts who attended it. Masterminded by the IPKat weblog team (who provided three of the participants) and hosted by Lincoln's Inn barristers Hardwicke (who provided the delicious lunch), the seminar was treated to a variety of topics which, in the form of PowerPoints, can be shared with all the IPKat's readers.

 While reading the PowerPoints for an event you didn't attend is never an easy task, these presentations do provide some useful reference materials and some handy bullets which, no doubt, the speakers can be persuaded to embellish.  The cast of speakers, chaired by IPKat team member Jeremy, together with their topics and links to their PowerPoints, runs as follows:

"Fact and fiction: recent UK case law on protecting plots" (Mark Engleman, Hardwicke), here

"Protecting computer games and business programs: is it possible?" (Shireen Permohamed, Harbottle & Lewis), here

"Music themes" (Nick Kounoupias, DMH Stallard), here

"Plots, themes and formats -— a US overview" (Annsley Merelle Ward, Collyer Bristow), here

"How do other countries handle these problems?" (Rebecca Dimaridis, Jeffrey Greeen Russell), here

"If copyright won’t provide protection, what of other IP rights?" (Birgit Clark, Berwin Leighton Paisner), here