Friday fantasies

Around the weblogs.  PatLit is hosting an appeal by Kingsley Egbuonu for UK intellectual property litigants to participate in his short online survey on the impact on IP litigation of the Jackson Review on the cost of civil procedures.  The 1709 Blog announces a neat little job for anyone who fancies themselves as an independent code reviewer for British copyright collecting societies, here.  Fellow Kat Neil, writing on the IP Finance weblog, outlines the approach taken by True Drinks to the leveraging of its AquaBall product through clever licensing-in.  Finally, courtesy of Class 46, here's the joint statement of MARQUES, ECTA, APRAM, BMM and UNION-IP on the European Commission's proposed Tobacco Products Directive (think "plain packaging").

To avoid being inundated by kindly emails from keen readers wondering if the IPKat happened to notice, here is confirmation that he has seen the news of the Spamalot case, reported on the BBC website today. Mark Forstater, who produced the 1975 film Monty Python And The Holy Grail, claimed he was underpaid royalties since the launch of Spamalot in 2005. He estimated he was entitled to more than £200,000.  Forstater argued that, for "financial purposes", he should be treated as "the seventh Python" under which, citing a 1974 agreement with Python (Monty) Pictures, he was entitled to a one-seventh cut of the 50% revenue on merchandise and spin-offs which film investors were promised.  The 155 paragraph judgment of Mr Justice Norris (Chancery Division, England and Wales) can be read here.

Old publications.  This weblog frequently posts information and even the occasional review of new publications, but it's not often that it has the opportunity to make reference to old ones.  However, it was with a little surprise and not a little amusement that this Kat, venturing into Olswang earlier this week for the annual SPC Blog seminar, found a parcel on his desk. Inside it was a copy of a book published by Infinite Ideas back in 2009 and entitled The Lives, Loves and Deaths of Splendidly Unreasonable Inventors, by Jeremy Coller (as in Coller IP) with Christine Chamberlain. Strangely, this curious and entertaining book has been published under two separate covers, each of which is featured here. Many inventors feature here and one's general impression, as an objective reader, is that most inventors are a petty miserable bunch -- just like any given control group of non-inventors, he suspects.  Merpel's hoping for a sequel, The Lives, Loves and Deaths of Splendidly Unreasonable Intellectual Property Litigators, a tome which, she is sure, will be a good deal longer than this one.  The book's web page is here.