Monday miscellany

Only a day to go, and it will be Tuesday 17 September: it's D-Day, otherwise known as Dinner Day.  On that day Union-ip's friends and members will be ingesting their Special K, the former USPTO head David Kappos who will be appearing in person at the Royal Overseas League, London, to tell the tale we all most want to hear -- the story of the future global role of IP. There are still a few places left for those foolish enough to have left it to the last minute to book their places.  For further details of the event and how to register for it, just click here.

"From IP to NP". That's the title of a two-day conference organised by the Israel Chapter of the AIPPI on 10 and 11 November at the Dan Panorama Convention Center, Tel Aviv.  If you were wondering, the "NP" bit stands for "net profit", and this event's co-sponsors include the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). According to the event's web-blurb, it's aimed at "innovators, senior management at innovative companies, and legal practitioners in the intellectual property sphere", giving registrants the chance to to learn from top professionals in business, legal practice, academia and leading government officials [In Merpel's experience there's not much that "leading government officials" can teach the target audience, but a great deal that the IP fraternity can teach the Men From the Ministry, so she hopes they're coming to listen as well as to speak]. As well as the plenary talks, there will be parallel break-out sessions to allow participants to pick and choose their topics of interest: participants will be spoiled for choice, what with such luminaries as Klaus Grabinski, Verena von Bomhard, David Kappos (see previous news item), Marshall Phelps, Randall Rader, Trevor Cook, Pravin Anand and Micaela Modiano making their various special talents available.

This Kat likes the theme of this conference, since it gives due weight to the importance of IP at the pre-innovation, innovation and post-innovation stages of a new product or process cycle while reminding us that it's still only a means to an end, not an end in itself.  He will be there to cover the event and to ask some searching questions.  Further details of the conference can be accessed here.

Is your food killing you? Call for the IPO!  "Fake food poses a huge threat to the health of consumers and can prove as profitable for organised crime as it can damage the UK economy", announces a striking media release from the UK government. The trigger for this is Interpol/Europol's Operation Opson, started in 2011 with the involvement of 10 countries, rising to 29 countries by 2012. Anyway:

"As part of the UK’s response the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) will host an international conference next week (20 September) to set out the UK's plans to support the Interpol/Europol Operation Opson ... 

The event will bring together more than thirty countries and key enforcement agencies to focus on how to tackle the growing issue of fake and substandard food and drink which covers both ‘fake’ branding of products as well as foodstuffs not subject to proper public health controls. The conference will also focus on lessons learned over the last year [This Kat presumes that there are still some lessons waiting to be learned, once someone has to start policing fake cigarettes if tobacco products with so-called "plain packaging" become the norm: real ciggies are quite harmful enough with having to deal with dangerous unlawful ones containing arsenic and lead too].

A coordinated period of action in 2012, targeting illicit food and drink, netted nearly 250 tonnes of illegal and hazardous food from everyday products such as coffee and olive oil to luxury goods like truffles and caviar. This operation also made more around 100 arrests as it targeted the organised crime networks behind this illegal trade. 

The conference will have a speaker from the Czech Republic police force who will talk about the case of methanol poisoning last year, which claimed more than 40 lives in the Czech Republic and Poland and led to a country-wide ban on the sale of alcohol above 20 per cent. The UK’s Food Standard Agency will speak about the horsemeat scandal and the impact this had on enforcement action and strengthening the safeguards in Britain ...” 

"Please, Eleonora, can we
tell everyone about your article?"

Like all Italians, our fellow Kat Eleonora is shy, retiring and timid as she tiptoes through the blogosphere, gently tickling the pixels as her posts flit from screen to screen. Really, most of the time you wouldn't even know she was around. That's why she's far too modest to blow her own trumpet and tell everyone about an excellent article which she has written, "The Orphan Works Provisions of the ERR Act: Are They Compatible with UK and EU Laws?", which is shortly to be published in the European Intellectual Property Review.  Well, if Eleonora won't tell you about it, this Kat will! Good news for readers with limited budgets, and even for those with unlimited ones, is that you can read Eleonora's thoughts (but not her mind -- she's a Kat, remember!) by clicking through to SSRN here.