Wednesday whimsies

"Thank you" 1.  In a world which is as full of anger, resentment and selfishly bad manners as the one in which we sometimes seem to be living, it never hurts to express a little gratitude from time to time.  It is in a spirit of genuine appreciation that the IPKat, Merpel and all the blogging team thank our readers for their continued interest and support.  Yesterday another milestone flashed by when we spotted that this blog had received its 11 millionth page view.  It goes without saying that we will do our best to maintain and improve on our current efforts to bring you a combination of good IP reporting and analysis, entertaining and sometimes provocative comment and stimulating debate.  Thanks!

"Thank you" 2. The IPKat received a very sweet email this morning from Stephen Green (Southampton Solent University), whose request for guidance on reading materials relating to US/UK comparison of character right protection was posted on Friday. Stephen tells us that he has already been rewarded with some helpful responses from readers.  This Kat is happy to pass this expression of gratitude to the blog's readership: as he has often said in the past, in the IP community there are always times when we need one another's help, so it warms the heart to see that help being so swiftly and freely given.  Thanks, again!

Around the weblogs.  The 1709 Blog's Ben Challis has produced yet another colourful CopyKat round-up of topical copyright issues.  Our good friend Laetitia Lagarde writes on Class 46 on an application for revocation of the LAMBRETTA Community trade mark that confronts IP Translator issues; the same blog reminds users of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market that the closing date for the office's user satisfaction survey is the end of this week.  The jiplp weblog lists the contents of JIPLP's November issue and reproduces in full the editorial on the concept of the typical royalty rate for IP licences.

Limerick competition.  The IPKat's limerick competition, for which the prize is complimentary registration for CLT's Intellectual Property Round-Up for Non-Patenty People Conference [not its real name ..] in London next week, has already generated some fascinating entries. The IPKat has also received a good deal of correspondence concerning what constitutes a limerick.  For the avoidance of doubt, do read the explanation of limericks on Wikipedia, here, rather than risk disappointment or, worse ...

Katfriend and IP enthusiast Andrew J. Clay (Squire Patton Boggs) writes to tell him about Sebastian, a 3 ¾ year old boy who, being slightly oxygen starved at birth, lives with cerebral palsy. He can walk – but only on his tip toes as the muscles in his legs are under such tension that his feet are literally scrunched up. The constant muscle tension in his legs is literally bending the bones in his legs which means that, by the time Sebastian is eight, he will be consigned to a wheel chair for the rest of his life. However, if he has a surgical procedure to cut some of the nerves affecting his legs, he has a really good chance of being able to walk, run, play football, and do a whole host of other stuff more or less just like the rest of us [Merpel has never seen Andrew run, let alone play football, but she's prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt ...]. For an optimal outcome he needs to have this operation in the spring of 2015. The operation is not available in the UK on the National Health Service so his parents are raising £75,000 so he can have the operation in the US, performed by a leading specialist for this surgical procedure. So far they have so raised just over £30,000.  Andrew is going to do a sponsored bike ride across the north of England from Morecombe to Bridlington – about 160 miles – on Friday 31 October to raise money for Sebastian’s operation. This Kat thinks this is jolly decent of him and has already sponsored him; he hopes readers will do likewise. You can read Sebastian's full story here and can sponsor Andrew by following this link.