Monday miscellany

New blog on the block. The IPKat was delighted to learn from his former colleague, Katonomist Nicola Searle, that the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is today launching IPO Facto, a research blog for the IPO's economics team. Merpel always gets this feeling that economists blogging about intellectual property rights is like atheists blogging about deities, but the IPKat is sure that much interesting material will emerge from this exercise and wishes it every good fortune.

For some folk, the problem of what to wear
at garden parties is an intractable one ...

Time to come to the aid of the party.  What is there to compare, in the great social whirl that characterises life in our time of recession, with the English garden party?  Well, the season for garden-partying is upon us, bearing in mind the changeable nature of the local weather conditions, this is good news for manufacturers of umbrellas as well as for purveyors of sparkling wines. But even if it rains there won't be many drips among the sparkling personalities who populate the AIPPI UK annual garden party. The date: 27 June 2013, 6 to 8.30 pm, Middle Temple Gardens. "A veritable bargain at £25 per person", says Merpel, who has never been known in her entire life to pay for anything ...  Details and registration here.

3 August 2013 is a big day for anyone involved in the protection of innovations in or arising from Saudi Arabia.  According to a media release from the World Intellectual Property Organization, Saudi Arabia is acceding both to the Patent Law Treaty and to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) -- which now boasts no fewer than 147 cooperating states. The map on the right, explains the IPKat, shows PCT nations in dark blue and the rest of the world in pale blue.  Merpel's relieved to hear this: from the chilly colours she thought it was something to do with the next Ice Age.

Around the weblogs. "The folly of crowds in contract drafting" is Mark Anderson's latest post on IP Draughts, this being "inspired by the words of Neil Wilkof, who recently posted an excellent article on the IPKat blog with the title: The IP Lawyer’s Nightmare: “But Everyone Else Does It”. Thanks Mark, the admiration's mutual!  More admiration goes to the Afro-IP weblog where recent posts from new team members Caroline Ncube (here) and Isaac Rutenberg (here), together with the ever-active Kingsley Egbuonu (here), are doing so much to show how much IP means to Africa, and vice versa.