Monday miscellany

It can be tough online if you
can't enforce your copyright ..

Getting ready for #HappyKat.  Tomorrow's the day that the IPKat's exciting afternoon seminar, "Online Copyright + Enforcement = Happiness?", masterminded by Eleonora, takes place at the lovely London premises of law firm Bristows LLP, beginning with registration (1.30 pm till 2 pm). You can check the programme out here. There's a change in the line-up since the event was first announced. Sadly Asim Singh can't be with us, but "Life (and death) of HADOPI in France?" is now in the safe hands of Brigitte Lindner.  There are FIVE CPD points for those lucky folk who attend. Others won't miss out on all the excitement, though, since Bristows LLP has kindly agreed to arrange for live streaming. To listen to the event as it happens, while watching the speakers' PowerPoints, click here.  The Kats also have a special hashtag for the event, #HappyKat, if you're in the mood to tweet ...

Meet the Bloggers 2014.  If you are in Hong Kong during the week of the International Trademark Association's meeting this coming May, don't forget to attend the 10th annual Meet the Bloggers reception on Monday 12 May, between 8 pm and 10 pm at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club.  Kindly hosted by the local office of Marks & Clerk, this event will give you a chance to meet some of IP's blogging legends in the flesh, if you can face the prospect, and of watching bloggers at first hand when they are not actually blogging about IP but just being ordinary people.  Satisfaction guaranteed. See you there!

I do declare! This Kat is embarrassed to confess that, in all his IP-related reading and news-gathering, he somehow missed the latest news relating to the Joint Declaration to Protect Wine Place Names & Origin, which was signed in Napa Valley on 26 July 2005 and which he hasn't mentioned since Cat the Kat's post back in October 2011. Recent news is that the list of signatories, which includes such distinguished names as Champagne, Chianti Classico, Jerez-Xérès-Sherry, Long Island, Napa Valley, Oregon, Paso Robles, Porto, Rioja, Sonoma County, Victoria, Tokaj, Walla Walla Valley, Washington state, Willamette Valley and Western Australia, has now been augmented by the American wine region of Santa Barbara County, California, and French wine regions Bordeaux and Bourgogne/Chablis. The Declaration represents the aspirations of "a global movement aimed at ensuring wine place names are protected and not abused or miscommunicated to consumers", though after several glasses of the protected substances it can be difficult to say some of these names at all, let alone miscommunicate them.

Around the weblogs.  The MARQUES Class 46 weblog reminds readers of the impending excitements of World Intellectual Property Day on 26 April. This year's theme sounds very copyright-ish, since it's on the theme of "Movies: a Global Passion". MARQUES's view, however, is that the movies have much to commend themselves to the branding industries, both because of the lucrative nature of merchandising tie-ups and because of the prospects which movies offer for spot-on marketing through product placement. Elsewhere on the IP blogosphere, it's a little quiet. This Kat has been so busy of late that he hasn't had a chance to write up his thoughts on the final version of the EU Tech Transfer Block Exemption Regulation, but in the meantime he commends readers to the piece on that topic by Mark Anderson on IP Draughts, here.

Time to party! As the IPKat reported not so long ago, the Intellectual Property Ball Trainees Ball is usually an annual event. Being quite non-discriminatory in its scope, the Ball is aimed at intellectual property trainees -- irrespective of whether they be trade mark attorneys, patent attorneys, IP solicitors or any other trainee in the profession. Since there was no Ball last year, the organisers emphasise that are extending the invitation even to recently qualified folk who didn’t get the chance to attend last year. This Kat, whose ability to read fancy fonts has not improved with time or with the provision of a new and enhanced set of spectacles, can confirm that the date of this event is 19 July and that, as yet, the organisers do not appear to have secured any award of CPD points for recently-qualified party-goers (though there may be other compensations). The invitation is on the right. If your eyesight is really good you can read the accompanying link; if not, all you have to do is zoom your page until you can, or trust this Kat that it's tinyurl.com/iptball2014, all of which sounds quite plausible. The price per ticket is £99, so if you are going you'd jolly well better make sure that you're getting your money's-worth of pleasure ...