Thursday thingies

Kontrite Kat

If you are the person who sent the IPKat what looks like quite an urgent email yesterday and are still awaiting a reply, can you please re-send it? In a clumsy attempt to forward it to his personal account for subsequent attention, this Kat seems to have erased all trace of it.  Please forgive him!

Around the weblogs. We all know, or pretend to know, about goodwill in brands, but fellow Kat has some big things to say about goodwill in patents and how to write it down in this piece for IP Finance on the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio. Over on the 1709 Blog, Ben Challis writes on why Taiwan's proposed copyright amendment covering the blocking of illegal content on foreign websites has raised the little island's temperature, here.  MARQUES's Class 46 weblog carries this post by Niamh Hall on Ireland's plans for plain packaging of tobacco products -- this post carries a link to MARQUES's position paper on plain packaging in light of the European Commission's proposals for a Directive, and it may seem surprising that Ireland is going further than the Directive will require. Finally, guest blogger Chijoke Ifeoma Okorie's guest blog for Afro-IP on a test case to see whether Nigeria's extra-statutory requirements for trade mark filing are legal has already attracted some comments.

Why can't they be both? 1 "Compulsory licences: necessity or threat?" is the title of an article for Chemistry World which is the fruit of cooperation between various IP experts, including Spicy IP’s Prashant Reddy and our very own Darren Smyth. You can can read it here [Merpel doesn't see why compulsory licences can't be both a necessity and a threat, which indeed -- in her ever-so-humble opinion -- they are].

Why can't they be both? 2 Here's a reminder that "Creativity, Innovation and Competition: Legal Paths or Roadblocks?" -- a one-day event taking place in the River Room of King’s College London, Strand Campus -- is coming up on 20 June. Star of the show is Professor Herbert Hovenkamp, all the way from the University of Iowa. [Merpel doesn't see why creativity, innovation, competition can't be the cause of both legal paths and road blocks, which indeed -- in her ever-so-humble opinion -- they are]. Click here for further information and even more hyperlinks to even more information ...

TheJudge (sic) is holding a panel debate on litigation funding and insurance -- its third -- focusing this time specifically on IP. In the chair is this Kat's friend and colleague, sage Scot Campbell Forsyth (partner, Olswang LLP). There are still some places left. If you want to be one of the lucky few, click here.