Thursday thingies

The SPC Blog logo

A little bit of kudos. First, the IPKat salutes his little buddy The SPC Blog which, unbelievably, now has 1,500 email subscribers.  This lean, no-nonsense blog, dedicated to news, views and information on patent term extension in the pharma and agrichemical sectors, also runs a free, full-to-capacity annual seminar, in keeping with its ethos as an IP community resource: its readers are drawn from both the proprietary and the generic sectors, from private practice, regulatory bodies and academe. "Thank you", say its blogging team.  


Secondly, the Kat family all say "well done" to a member of the current squad of guest Kats, Robert Cumming. His post on the impact on the brand value of the Glasgow-based Rangers FC football team if had to play in England rather than its native Scotland was picked up by leading professional news-rag Legal Week, which considered it worthy enough to be given a wider audience than the IP-driven readership which this weblog possesses.

Around the weblogs.  Do you remember the days when Russian brands were all state-owned? Well, they may be coming back. The MARQUES Class 46 blog reports on how the Russian Federation has clawed the valuable STOLICHNAYA and MOSKOVSKAYA vodka brands from the private sector -- with good reason, it would appear.  Class 46's posts are generally announced via MARQUES's Twitter account, which has just gained its 1,400th follower. Iona Harding (1709 Blog) looks at another aspect of the relationship between the organs of state and the individual, asking about the extent to which the government should get involved in internet browsing and linking.  As if you've not got enough to read, the jiplp weblog is offering a second batch of IP books for review -- and if you know of any good IP tax havens, the IP Finance blog has just revisited this topic. 

Net neutrality: one
net, regardless of
the fish?

It might be summer in the rest of Europe, but you can be sure that the Union's bureaucracy is working away in Brussels just as hard -- and dining just as enthusiastically -- as if it were the heart of winter and they all had to replenish their depleted reservoir of energy. Thanks to the IPKat's trusty friend Magali Delhaye comes this recent evidence of the European Commission's huge consumption of calories. She writes:

Earlier this week the European Commission launched another public consultation on net neutrality (the Commission previously launched a public consultation on more general aspects of net neutrality on 30 June 2010, that ran until 30 September 2010). The new consultation seeks answers to questions on transparency, switching and certain aspects of internet traffic management. The third of those issues is the one that will probably interest content providers (among others) as they generally consider that internet traffic management procedures should be used to protect their IPR (filtering and removal/blocking of protected content that is unlawfully used). The questionnaire, in PDF format, can be accessed here.

 The deadline for submitting responses to this public consultation is 15 October 2012. More information can be found here".

Printing the invites to the IP Publishers and
Editors event was such a pain before the days
of desktop publishing ...

Calling all IP publishers and editors.  This year's annual meeting of IP Publishers and Editors will take place a little earlier than usual, on Wednesday 21 November, in order to cause fewer problems for people working towards difficult end-of-year deadlines.  Mark the date in your diary if you hope to come. Further information will be made available nearer the time, though it can be said with confidence even now that the meeting will take place in Central London.  People who are already on the IPKat's list from last year will be automatically re-invited.  If you're not on the IPKat's list but -- being an IP publisher, editor, online information distributor or whatever -- think you should be, just email the IPKat here and tell him. If you've any bright ideas for this year's guest speaker, you can let Merpel know at the same address [Merpel adds: this isn't just a UK thing. We've had people attending from the US, Germany, Switzerland, the Benelux and other exotic places too].