Friday fantasies

Friday -- time to reflect, take things easy, and check out all those exciting events on the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page!

In "Some Light Reading", Cat the Kat reviewed a lovely little book entitled In Varietate Concordia? National and European Trademarks living apart together. The work, a collection of essays by well known authors on new problems in trade mark law, was published in honour of the 40th Anniversary of the Benelux Intellectual Property Office (BOIP). On the face of things, it seemed to be available only to friends of the BOIP, since no purchase details were provided. However, there's good news for anyone who wants a copy. You don't have to be a friend of BOIP or even like the office: all you have to do is request a copy by email to legal@boip.int and hope for the best!  Says the IPKat, don't forget to add your terrestrial address -- otherwise the best you can hope for is a pdf file.  Asks Merpel, In Varietate Concordia: isn't that a Papal Bull?

Paws for thought ...

Around the blogs 1. "Third Circuit: Copyright Infringement - Removing Photographer's Name from Image Violates DMCA" was the title of this piece on the Copyright Litigation Blog: it reviews a fascinating little dispute which the IPKat won't spoil by summarising.  IP Tango's email subscription box, which has been unwell for some weeks, is probably working again. Apologies to all Latin American IP enthusiasts whose attempts to subscribe have been thwarted. Ben Challis, writing for the 1709 Blog, chronicles the increasingly tough life of illegal streamers and hackers in the US and Germany respectively, here and here.

Benoît the Blogger

Around the Blogs 2. Benoît Battistelli (European Patent Office President and occasional blogger) tells us on the EPO blog here how happy his staff are, now that he is in charge; "the numbers replying positively to the various questions about sense of wellbeing, work-life balance and the EPO employment package are up by between 10 and 22 percentage points" although "there is still progress to be made in certain areas, especially conflict resolution [The Kat thought this was supposed to reflect the attitudes of staff, not parties in opposition proceedings], and a survey only gives a snapshot of the situation at a certain time [These must be the snapshots from the EPO Christmas party, thinks Merpel]".

Some anxious readers have been asking after Miri Frankel, who used to send items to this weblog from time to time.  The Kat now learns that she has returned to civilisation after a lengthy field trip to Yellowstone National Park, where she was assiduously researching an alarming episode of trade mark dilution, as reported in The Onion here. Welcome back, Miri: we hope you sent our best regards to Yogi Bear and Boo Boo (whoops, that's the wrong Park too ...)


Following the IPKat's recent posting on geographic indications (GIs) and the absence of a watch service for them, the Kat's friend Chris Terrero kindly sent in this step-by-step checklist which will enable any reader to see what GI proposals are currently in the pipeline in the European Union (this will also retrieve some more general legislative matter on the subject, but that might not be a bad thing):

1. Go to Eur-Lex http://eur-lex.europa.eu/
2. Click on EN (assuming your preferred language is English);
3. In the left hand column, click on Preparatory Acts
4. Click on Search in Preparatory Acts (top left in green);
5. In the right hand column, choose Keywords (Eurovoc) and click on Search
6. In the box Enter a EUROVOC descriptor, type “designation of origin” (without the quotes) and click on Search

An alternative, which seems to retrieve just the applications (proceed as above to step 4) 

5. Choose Search Terms in the right hand column and click on Search
6. Enter 510 in the “Search for” and 2006 in the “With” box (this being the number of the relevant Regulation) and click on Search

Thanks, Chris -- much appreciated!