Monday miscellany

Well done Neil. Fellow Kat and trade mark transactional guru Neil J Wilkof (for it is he) has just been elected to a three-year term of office on the International Trademark Association (INTA) Board of Directors. This is the first occasion on which a Kat has occupied such a position and we are sure that Neil will be a great ambassador for responsible IP blogging as well as a good and loyal servant of the international trade mark community.

Forthcoming events.  Another batch of recently-passed events has been deleted from the IPKat's list on the very sensible ground that they are no longer forthcoming. How many of these events will now be just a warm, happy memory in the minds of those who attended them? Never mind, some fresh events have been added, so do take the effort to check them out here.

Talking of forthcoming events, fellow Kat Eleonora is rustling up plenty of interest in a conference on 17 and 18 September next, down on the south coast of England in the historical town of Southampton, whose university she is presently gracing.  The event in question is the first conference to be held by iCLIC, the university's new interdisciplinary core on law, internet and culture. The event will focus on enrolling internet intermediaries in the enforcement process: if you want to speak, there's a call for papers. Details are available here.

Around the weblogs.  Congratulations to the IP Finance weblog on securing its 1,500th email subscriber.  This blog, founded in January 2008, offers more than 1,200 searchable items on all sorts of money-related topics, not to mention book notices and reports on events.  Well done! Elsewhere, the jiplp weblog carries a Current Intelligence note from Mira T. Sundara Rajan on the Washington Redskins' is-it-offensive-or-not trade mark saga.  Two blogs -- The SPC Blog and the 1709 Blog -- bring news of forthcoming rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union on supplementary protection certificates for patents and fair compensation for private use of copyright works respectively.

Early Christmas is another of those quaint traditions for which TIPLO -- The Intellectual Property Lawyers Organisation -- is justly noted. TIPLO's Christmas event takes place on Tuesday 2 December (that's next week) and, if there are any turkeys on the menu, there are none on the programme: the star attraction is Mr Justice Birss, speaking on "IP Tales of the Unexpurgated Unexpected".  The venue is the Cholmondeley [here's how you pronounce that name] Room in the House of Lords, Westminster. Full details of the event, how to book for it and all that stuff are here.  Merpel's wondering what the IP Tales of the Unexpected might be: how about (i) US recognises patent trolls as a protected species, (ii) Court of Justice of the European Union issue statement: "We made a mess of the IP TRANSLATOR case", (iii) Google offers to pay for the use of thumbnails on Google Image, (iv) European Patent Office voted "Best Place to Work" or, even more unexpectedly (v) orphan comes forward to claim royalties for use of orphan work. On Scintilla, Joel Barrett's "Brothers in Arms, copyright in photographs" touches on a dispute involving both matters of procedure and principle in a fascinating piece of litigation. Readers' suggestions of further unexpected tales are welcome.