Monday miscellany

Some upcoming events involving Kats and friends. There's such a lot going on these days! If you're in London on the relevant days, here are some of the intellectual property events at which you might reasonably expect to encounter one or more members of the city's IP blogging fraternity.  With the exception of the Music and IP conference on 5 December, all of the following are free to attend.

• This isn't actually an event in the formal sense, but IPKat team member Jeremy will be in residence at the Old Nick, Sandland Street, this coming Wednesday, 9 November, between the hours of 5.00pm and 6.30pm, where he is meeting a distinguished intellectual property lawyer who will have travelled all the way from Montréal, Canada. Please feel free to join us!
  
  
• IPKat's seminar on Tuesday 15 November, "When bad things happen to bad licences -- and even to good ones" (full details here), in which Kat blogger Neil J. Wilkof and Paul Joseph (RPC) discuss some rare old disasters in the zone of IP licensing and sublicensing, has been shifted to a larger room in RPC's London HQ.  This means that all the people who were on the original reserve list now have places reserved for them.  There is still room for a few more registrants, too.
  
  
• On Tuesday 22 November the IP Finance weblog is hosting "“Facts and figures on FRAND licensing for standards-essential IP”: seminar update", with WiseHarbor's Keith Mallinson speaking, three excellent panellists to conmment and IPKat/IP Finance team member Jeremy in the Chair. The venue is the comfy London office of Olswang LLP. We've still room for a few more registrants before we have to open a reserve list. Full details can be found here.
  
  
• The second annual Music and Intellectual Property Conference, masterminded by CLT Conferences, takes place on Monday 5 December. IPKat team member Jeremy is in the Chair and various members of the IP blogosphere are among the speakers.  Full details can be accessed here.
  
  
• The IPKat's annual IP Publishers' and Editors' buffet on Wednesday 7 December (details are listed on last week's Friday Fantasies post) is filling up nicely. The Kat however respectfully reminds invitees (and people who have not been invited but should have, since they are either IP editors or publishers or have something to do with communicating intelligible IP to the wider world) that he hopes there won't be too many last-minute acceptances, otherwise there might not be enough food and drink for all who attend. So please let him know sooner, rather than later, if you plan to join us.

Around the blogs. First, a couple of congratulations are due -- to the copyright-oriented 1709 Blog, which has just welcomed its 1,000th email subscriber, and to The SPC Blog, which is demonstrating quite how big a tiny little niche like patent term extension can be by quite incredibly welcoming its 1,250th email subscriber. Well don, both!  The 1709 Blog is also welcoming one of its original team of guest bloggers, Amanda Harcourt, back into its regular team after all too long a break.

Moving now from subscribers to substance, the jiplp blog is happy to be able to share with its readers the full text of a Current Intelligence note by Tim Powell and Rebecca Lawrence (Powell Gilbert LLP) on the Advocate General's Opinion in the joined Medeva and Georgetown University cases, ahead of the court's ruling on 24 November.  Back in action after a quiet summer, Art & Artifice's Rosie Burbidge is promising great things, starting with "Don't be a mug: Yet another reason to avoid arrest" -- an enjoyable little romp into the territory of mugshots which has already attracted several comments and looks like receiving more.  And let's not forget Afro-IP, where this week's A to Z online tour of official IP offices in Africa sees Kingsley Egbuonu finding some kind words for The Gambia.

Mr Kellogg was
the first person to make
a packet by exploiting
the magical power
of the letter 'k'

Bags and Baggage. Are there no limits to the dedication of the IPKat's wonderful news-spotters? Chris Torrero has been investigating the murky underworld of ladies' handbags and scouring the web-pages of the Daily Mail in order to unearth a piece with a title which is so improbably long that this weblog would never have tolerated it: "Kreative licence? Kardashian Kollection bags pay a little too much tribute to top designers' most famous it bags" [That's 112 characters, notes the Kat who tweets. Perhaps one day someone will invent 'tiny titles' to complement the 'tiny urls' we have grown to love]. The issue at stake is whether the Kardashian sisters -- Kim, Kourtney and Khloe -- have innocently and lovingly, er, copied, the well known designs of competitors whose names do not begin with 'K' such as Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel and Alexander Wang. This Kat is hoping that the girls are not planning to venture into the world of IP blogging, where he has a special interest in the highly distinctive initial letter 'K'.  Merpel thinks the most interesting thing about the Special K sisters is that their brother is called Robert.  Was this the result of inertia of imagination, failure of foresight or simply an inability of the senior Kardashians to agree on Kris, Kolin, Kurt, Keith, Kevin, Kuthbert ...?