Thursday thingies

It's still not too late to squeeze into the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) Congress, which takes place in London next Thursday and Friday. If you are one of the lucky people who will be attending, you'll be pleased to know that Wim van der Eijk, Vice-President of the European Patent Office's Directorate General for Appeals and chairman of the Enlarged Board of Appeal will be giving a keynote address -- and also joining the panel discussion on validity. By virtue of his role with the EPO, Wim probably generates more mumbles and grumbles from dissatisfied patent applicants, opponents and their representatives, aunts, uncles and cousins than anyone else on the planet. Notwithstanding this, he will be offering his own personal overview of the latest Board and Enlarged Board of Appeal developments, highlighting what the EPO regards as the most important decisions for practitioners. Particular emphasis will be placed upon decisions of the Enlarged Board of Appeal. Rumour has it that he will venture into the politically sensitive area of harmonisation in Europe (controversial) and beyond (not as controversial, though it ought to be even more so). In doing so, he will stress the difficulties currently facing the patent world and focus on means which may help to overcome them. Wim adds:

"Underlying these considerations is one fundamental question: what can be done to reach more conformity of approach within Europe or even worldwide in the evaluation of the validity of patents?"

If you want to hear the answer to this question -- or if you already know it but are just curious to see if Wim gets it right, Congress details are available here. Merpel notes: you have missed the Early Bird discount, but at least there is no Late Bird surcharge ...

Democratic Republic of Congo
-- a pretty flag is no substitute
for some decent online IP
facilities ...

Around the weblogs. Kudos to Mark Anderson (IP Draughts, here) for daring to preface a very good post with the shockingly true title "Data can be a singular noun". Merpel looks forward to sequels with titles like "Criteria can't be a singular noun" ... Meanwhile, over on SOLO IP, there's a call for small and sole IP practitioners in England and Wales to be equally daring by offering their services to the Law Society Intellectual Property Working Party. Not quite news of a blog, but here's some news of a blogger: the IPKat's friend and former colleague, the excellent Rosie Burbidge (Art & Artifice) has had a piece published in the British national press, a neat note on the new small claims track for IP disputes which appears in the Guardian here.  Over in Africa, Afro-IP's Kingsley Egbuonu reports that the Democratic Republic of Congo has become the latest country on that continent to have done absolutely nothing about improving the pathetic state of its online IP services over the past year.  Finally, if you are looking for the chance to do some intellectual property research in a part of University College London that is not normally associated with IP, take a look at this opportunity on the 1709 Blog.

Late last month the IPKat noted that there was another case heading for a preliminary ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, but he had no idea what the underlying dispute was all about.  He is therefore indebted to his friend Hugo Cox for letting him know. His pithy summary runs thus: "French hotel sells photos without photographer’s permission to Phaidon in France. Phaidon sells books in Germany. Can photographer sue hotel in Germany?"  Thanks, Hugo! All the Kats hope that the Court's judgment will be as short ...

The IPKat has learned from his venerable friend Anna Carboni that in a little bit less than a month, on 2 November, the United Kingdom's .uk internet registry Nominet is combining with UCL's Institute of Brand and Innovation Law (IBIL) to lay on a one-day seminar on its domain name dispute resolution policy. This policy has now been in place for over ten years and has won several awards [and not a few brickbats, Merpel naughtily notes].  It is however apparent from the quality of many of the complaints that are submitted under the policy that complainants and their advisers are not as familiar with its workings as they might be [though sometimes more familiar with its workings than they wanted to be, mumbles the same moggy, somewhat subversively], as is much the same with the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP). This is the first seminar of its kind dealing with Nominet's policy and the speakers are all members of Nominet staff or Nominet’s panel of independent adjudicators -- save for one: The organisers are still chortling with glee at their luck in having secured the participation of the new President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, as the chairman of the afternoon panel discussion on ‘Initial Interest Confusion’. Tickets acquired online here by Friday of this week can be obtained for a mere £99. If you are that way inclined, the day carries with it 7 CPD points ...