Wednesday whimsies

Only seven more places are available for next month's Initial Interest Confusion seminar, hosted at Hardwicke in London's lovely Lincoln's Inn on 7 September. Speakers are Ben Allgrove (Baker & McKenzie), Alice Gould (Wedlake Bell), Annsley the AmeriKat (Collyer Bristow) and Mark Engelman (Hardwicke), with IPKat team blogger Jeremy in the chair.  Programme and registration details of this IPKat-driven event are here.

Around the weblogs. The IPKat's Turkish friend and scholar, Mehmet Artemel, has given a pretty thorough review of the UK Intellectual Property Office's recent "Intellectual Asset Management for Universities” on Peter Groves' Ipso Jure weblog here.  The Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice's jiplp blog offers a handy case note, "Exceptions to public lending rights and authors’ remuneration: the ECJ in Vewa v Belgium" here; the authors are Enrico Bonadio (City University London) and Marco Bellezza (Portolano Colella Cavallo, Italy).  If you're feeling melodramatic or really hate that feeling of impotence that arises when you know there's an official web page out there with the information you want but you just can't find it, try "Wuthering Sites: a drama for users of the Patents Court", a guest post by Vicki Salmon (IP asset) on the PatLit weblog.   Finally, if you are fascinated by German copyright but can't tell your Johnny Depp from your Marcus Off, take a quick peep at Monika Bruss's "How Fair is Fair?" on the 1709 Blog.

Famous Marx

Late last month Mr Maza from Mexico told the IPKat excitedly about his county's list of certified famous trade marks. The Kat was sure that Mexico was not the only country that had such a list and asked his readers for help.  Sure enough, with the assistance of the ever-helpful Frederick Mostert, the Kat can tell you that the following countries have famous marks lists:

China, where lists are published twice a year by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce
Japan – where marks designated in decisions as being well known are listed by the Industrial Property Digital Library
Czech Republic. This list is for information only, and has no legal status
Russia

Notorious Marx

Mexico: in relation to declarations of notoriety and fame
Ukraine
Belarus
Brazil – This increasingly important jurisdiction maintains a list of famous or highly reputed marks (that status is recorded against the mark concerned)
Bulgaria
India
Thailand
Turkey (though the current status of list is not clear)

DNA patent-y thing. Are you interested in the impact of DNA patents on diagnostic innovation? Have you the patience to read an overview of recent empirical research on the impact of DNA patenting in relation to diagnostics which focuses on reviewing published academic research?  Do you yearn to take action but just need that little bit of extra guidance? If so, the Human Genetics Commission (HGC) Seminar Report on Intellectual Property and DNA Diagnostics could be just the thing you're looking for. This report is guaranteed to contain no fewer than four recommendations for you to consider. It weighs in at 491KB, contains 20 surprisingly readable pages and can be downloaded here.  Thanks, Chris Torrero, for drawing it to this Kat's attention [Merpel's sulking that there isn't an equivalent of the HGC for cats. Humans aren't the only life forms with DNA, she moans ...]. nb This HGC isn't the other HGC -- the Human Genome Center which, as you can guess from the American spelling of Centre, is based in Tokyo, Japan,