Friday fantasies

This week the IPKat learned of the existence of the Kosovo Institute of Intellectual Property (KsIIP). The KsIIP, so far as he can discover, is a non-profit association, established in Kosovo, which aims to promote intellectual property rights in that country by providing training for young professionals, entrepreneurs, lawyers, not to mention students of law and economics. Further details may be obtained by emailing the KsIIP at kosovoip@gmail.com

This Kat was thrilled to hear the news today that his friend Dr Galit Gonen, who heads up Teva's European litigation team, was voted ILO Global IP Counsel of the Year in New York last night.  Recent readers of this weblog may not know that, having obtained her doctorate on linkages between legal and marketing theories regarding secondary patents for pharmaceuticals, Galit was kind enough to put her head on the chopping board and defend it all over again for an IPKat Seminar back in November 2011 -- a brave and courageous thing for anyone to do.

Around the weblogs.  Cynics may laugh at the usefulness of geographical indication protection, but they work: here's a Class 46 blogpost by Miguel Angel Medina on how a Colombian GI for coffee was enforced in Spain against a speculative local trade mark applicant.  Over in Africa, Chijioke Ifeoma Okorie -- who has now joined the Afro-IP blog team -- has made some good points about the relationship of copyright-based businesses to the increasingly popular concept of open educational resources. On the 1709 Blog, Asim Singh relates how the transfer of responsibility for graduated responses to online copyright abusers from HADOPI to the CSA has hit a speed bump.

Do you practise IP and speak Bulgarian? If so, you will be pleased to learn from Katfriend Ventsi Stoilov that Bulgaria's Council of Ministers has now said that all citizens of the European Economic Area and Switzerland can practise intellectual property law in that lovely country -- so long as they are registered with the local Patent Office [hang on there, says Merpel, shouldn't this have happened ages ago?  What has taken so long?]. 

It’s Friday – why not curl
up and listen to a good
podcast on patent trolls?

When patents attack. Much has been written recently about recent efforts by the US government and other jurisdictions to help operating businesses defend themselves against claims from patent trolls, including here, here and here. What more could be said? Well, Katfriend Miri Frankel has just come across a podcast called “When Patents Attack” by National Public Radio show This American Life. The podcast details the show’s investigation of an NPE called Intellectual Ventures and its subsidiaries and patent holdings. According to This American Life, the representatives they interviewed from Intellectual Ventures stated they were helping small inventors generate income from their patented inventions. That claim set This American Life off on a two-year investigation into the inner workings of Intellectual Ventures and the inventors they claim to help. The twists and turns they uncover in the history of the NPE and the patents it acquired is fascinating and worth a listen.