Friday fantasies

Friday's the day to check the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page. You just never know what exciting activities, lectures, seminars and conferences are just around the corner!




Among the events which are in the offing, the IPKat begs to inform you of the following -- all of which he has a paw in ...):

• Dr Galit Gonen's seminar on "Linkages between legal and marketing theories regarding secondary patents for pharmaceuticals", organised by the IPKat weblog, takes place next Thursday, 3 November, from 5.00pm to 6.30pm, at the London offices of Olswang LLP.  Galit heads Teva's European patent litigation operation and in this seminar she presents some original research. Mr Justice Arnold will be in the chair.  There are now 81 registrants for this seminar, but the room can still hold a few more. Click here for further details.
  
  
• A copyright debate: "Is NLA v Meltwater the end of browsing?" is to be hosted in the London office of Baker & MacKenzie LLP on Tuesday 15 November, 5.15pm to 7.00pm. A fuller announcement will soon appear on the 1709 Blog. Meanwhile, if you'd like to attend (admission free; 1.5 hours in CPD available; IPKat team member Jeremy in the chair and four outstanding speakers), email Naomi Harrison here and tell her the Kat sent you.
  
  
• Keith Mallinson (WiseHarbor) is giving a presentation at the London offices of Olswang LLP on Tuesday 22 November, 5.00pm to 6.30pm, under the title “Facts and figures on FRAND licensing for standards-essential IP”. Keith is a regular guest contributor to the IP Finance weblog (to which two IPKat team members contribute) on FRAND-related issues and has made a major contribution to debate on this sometimes contentious topic. Registrations currently stand at 18 and admission is free, which means that anyone who is turning up for the refreshments should be able to do quite well -- but we're expecting a surge in bookings soon. Click here for further details.
  
  
• IBC's third annual International Patent Litigation Conference takes place on Thursday, 8 December in the Bloombury Hotel, London -- just a few paw-paces from this Kat's habitual Holborn haunt. There is a generous 10% discount available to readers of this blog who quote the VIP Code FKW82249PLL when registering.  All you need to know is just one click away.

Happy news.  The IPKat's team is happy to report that Catherine Lee (Cat the Kat) is rejoining them.  Apart from being an Australian, a wine buff, an Oxford PhD and a wine buff, Catherine has now acquired an almost unparalleled knowledge of the Lea Valley cucumber.  A fresh biographical note for Catherine will be added to the team's dramatis personae once she has decided which bits are worth including.  In the meantime, the other Kats chortle in unison "Welcome back!"

From time to time this Kat gets asked about IP and IT law distance learning courses.  He's not an authority on the subject, but he can tell you that the Institute for Computer and Communications Law (ICCL) at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS) Queen Mary, University of London, is offering LLM, Postgraduate Diplomas and Postgraduate Certificates in Computer and Communications Law by Distance Learning. Further details are available here.  The IPKat's ideal distance learning programme is illustrated on the left ...


As editor of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP), this Kat often receives interesting submissions of articles for publication on the theme of intellectual property and religious law. Indeed, in the past two years he has been offered contributions on the impact upon intellectual property law of (in alphabetical order) Christian, Islamic and Jewish legal doctrine.  None of these articles has been published in JIPLP since, regardless of their merit, their content has tended to be philosophical and historical and has not sufficiently addressed the "law and practice" criteria which the journal's publisher Oxford University Press and also its peer reviewers seek to apply with increasing severity.  Good news for IP-and-religion enthusiasts, however, is just around the corner.  Oxford University Press is in the process of launching a new journal, the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion (OJLR), the details of which are accessible from its website here.  If this subject enthuses, involves or troubles you sufficiently to want to write an article on it, OJLR is the place to send it!


Those dodgy scam sites again.  The IPKat's longstanding friend Richard Gallafent (Gallafents LLP) has written to him on the subject of the CRPT Central Register for Patents and Trademarks.  He draws attention to the fact that the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) warning site is out of action.  Indeed, this Kat has just verified that visits to the first three organic results for a search of WIPO + warning:

http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/warning/pct_warning.htmhttp://www.wipo.int/portal/en/scam_warning.htmlhttp://www.wipo.int/contact/en/area.jsp?area=scams

all generated the same depressing message:

404 - File or directory not found.The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Unable to check if CRPT was on the WIPO list, Richard then checked out www.crpt.eu, and visited the "Trademark publications" page.  He writes that,

"assuming you have not been rendered completely senseless by reading the terms and conditions page - I particularly liked the concept of "reproached functions", you can put in the name of a large city, and click search. You can then see how many entries there are. 

If one assumes that all offers to mark owners in the UK are for the same price (€495 I am advised by someone who received such a letter), and that all the current entries result from mark owners paying the sum in question, then just the income from mark owners with LONDON in their address amounts to €162,855. 

So lets have no more of that unqualified asserttion that you can't make money out of IP!"

Thanks so much for your diligent efforts, Richard. This Kat hopes that readers bear them in mind --and that the WIPO warning services is soon working again.