Tuesday tiddlywinks

Forthcoming events. Here's our usual reminder to check out the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page for all sorts of conferences, seminars, lectures and the like.  One such event, coming up tomorrow, is the "Intellectual Property: the 'no patents' round-up for non-techie people" [that's the one which inspired our limerick competition], organised by CLT and taking place in the Grange Fitzrovia Hotel, London W1.  This Kat will be chairing it and will be happy to say hello to any readers who happen to be there.

Clad in nothing but her own hair,
Godiva takes a trot through Coventry

Hair-raising. Several readers have emailed the IPKat excitedly to tell him all about a dastardly Belgian plot to steal Lady Godiva, who virtuously paraded through the streets of Coventry, clad only in her own hair, as a protest against oppressively high local taxation.  The truth is somewhat less dramatic: Godiva Chocolatier, which (according to The Mail, here) performed the remarkable feat of patenting Lady Godiva's identity in the UK in 2007, has demanded that the Lady Godiva pub -- based in Geneva -- change its name. Better news was to follow, though. According to the Coventry Telegraph the Belgian, Turkish-owned company has reassured residents of Coventry and its environs that they are taking a reassuringly friendly line with them and will not seek to prevent them enjoying their heritage.   Says Merpel, isn't it about time that indigenous communities were protected against the misappropriation of their local cultural heritage ...?

Rod the Mod

There's a terrific piece in the New Yorker (one of this Kat's favourite long-flight reads) entitled "Crooner in rights spat", which you can read here. It's all about veteran British rock star Rod Stewart and an episode involving a photograph of the back of his head. Whatever you may think about the legal content, New Yorker articles are in general beautifully crafted and well-balanced between the opposite poles between which their content is suspended.  This Kat would however take issue with one thing: the description of Rod Stewart as a "crooner".  The word "croon", defined as "to sing or hum in a soft, soothing voice", seems singularly inept for what Wikipedia terms Stewart's "distinctively raspy singing voice". Anyway, there's a well deserved Katpat for Graham Titley for spotting this item and letting us know about it.

The MewView option

Settlement 1. Via Katfriend Lee Curtis (Katpat!) comes news that YouView reached a settlement with Total Limited to continue using the ‘YouView’ brand name [on YouView's unhappy litigation over its right to use the name see earlier Katposts here and here; on YouView's Community trade mark tussle with You-View.tv, see Katpost here]. After YouView lost at every stage in court, a confidential settlement has been reached which lets  YouView carry on using its name and avoid a potentially costly rebranding exercise. This Kat continues to believe that a rebrand would in the long term have been a better strategy: even now, he occasionally reads YouView as YouTube ...

Settlement 2.  Via Law360 comes this link to the welcome news that Patent & Trademark Agency LLC --a company that this Kat's friends at White Plains NY-based IP firm Leason Ellis LLP accused of perpetrating a trade mark registration services scam -- is to shut down, according to a proposed settlement filed last week in a New York federal court. As a condition of the settlement, this misleadingly named company and its operator, Armens Organesjans, agree to stop offering intellectual property services and will refund customers in exchange for Leason Ellis ending the suit it filed last year.  Leason Ellis is home to veteran trade mark blogger and Washington Redskin brand-basher Marty Schwimmer: to read about Marty's earlier assault on scammers USA Trademark Enterprises, see earlier Katposts here and here.


PACER is the acronym for Public Access to Court Electronic Records, the United States online public access service that lets users get hold of case and docket information from federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts -- a service that is obviously handy for the IP community, given the fact that so much intellectual property case law in the US is processed by the federal courts. This Kat's attention has been drawn to PacerMonitor, which describes itself as being "Simply the best way to search Federal Court cases". He has not tried it out himself, but notes that it comes at a price. Have any readers tried it? Let's hear from you if you have.

Around the weblogs.  Does exhaustion of rights extend to e-books? There's a note on the jiplp weblog by Míchel Olmedo Cuevas that's worth a look. On SOLO IP, Barbara Cookson reviews the EPO's new case management system, while this blogger craves some good ideas for dealing with vast influxes of emails. "Who framed the CopyKat?", asks Ben Challis on the 1709 Blog, while there's also a reminder that being employed by someone else isn't a way of wriggling out of an injunction to prevent copyright infringement.  Finally, on Class 46 Laetitia Lagarde pots the recent General Court ruling in the LAGUIOLE Community trade mark battle, on which this weblog hopes to carry a big feature in the near future.