Friday fantasies

Forthcoming events. There's always plenty going on, so why not check, out the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page and see if there's anything you fancy?  Not all the events cater for main-line IP interests: plenty of esoteric topics are tackled too. For example, there's the Secured Transaction Law Reform Project Seminar, "Security Interests over IP Rights", 27 March 2015 in the London office of Olswang LLP (full details can be found on the IP Finance weblog here). Also, registration is now open for "Cultivating Innovation: How (and How Not) to Think About Intellectual Property in Agriculture and Plant Science", coming up on 14 April (details can be found here).

Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP).  First, just to let you know that Oxford University Press-published JIPLP, in which many members of the IPKat team are heavily involved on the editorial side and/or as contributors, is planning a conference on Thursday 26 November to mark ten years of publication.  Further details of this event will be announced in due course. Meanwhile, if you'd like to join us for what should be a wonderful day, mark your diaries now.  Secondly, the jiplp weblog carries not just the contents list for the March issue of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice but also fellow Kat Eleonora's editorial on whether 2015 is the year of the blocking injunction, so do take a peep if you feel tempted to do so.  Thirdly, if you are thinking of writing for JIPLP or are just curious to see what it looks like, here's a reminder that it's possible to view a sample issue online and it won't cost you a penny to do so: for further details click here.

Around the weblogs. The 1709 Blog has another CopyKat round-up from Ben Challis, while former guest Kat Marie-Andrée Weiss comes up with a real cracker on one of those "it could only happen in America" cases, where a dentist tries to use copyright as a means of suppressing a patient's critical comments. Class 46 has reported a trilogy of cases of note this week. In the first two, potted by Laetitia, the General Court finds INTERFACE and INTERFOG confusingly similar for fungicides, herbicides and other Class 5 products, notwithstanding the fact that they both start with the not entirely distinctive prefix "inter", while the earlier ZITRO SPIN BINGO mark is incapable of blocking the registration of the lovely figurative mark on the right, even for the same goods and services. In the third, from Yvonne Onomor, the French Cour de Cassation dismissed an appeal by Hachette ('Paris March') against a ruling that it was barred by acquiescence from suing dating website Match.com.

A performer feels the pain. Following Cat the emeritus Kat's post earlier this week on the Wu-Tang Clan's ingenious (though not, it seems, quite so original) plan for launch the group's latest album as, quite literally, a one-off, the Kats have had the pleasure of receiving an email from Les Hurdle. Les -- a veteran bass guitarist whose varied career stretches from playing with the Wombles (right) to Lou Reed -- paid a visit to Whosampled.com.  From this visit Les discovered that the Wu-Tang Clan have sampled 209 other recordings, while 507 others have sampled the Wu-Tang Clan.  Adds Les:

"What is always interesting to note in most discussions re sales or copyright is the lack of reference to the engine in all of these productions, the performers! Of the 209 samples used by Wu-tang Clan (left) it is likely more than 1,000 performers have been taken advantage of. How many received a share of the licence fee, how many of those 209 recordings are registered at PPL etc., how many times are the performers not paid for broadcasts [worldwide], how many times do broadcasts go unnoticed [worldwide], how many times are the performers not accounted to! Similar issues re the 500+ productions which have 'used' Mssrs Tang and Co., yet nary a word, anywhere. Wu-Tang Clan are but a drop in the bucket with regard to 'numbers' on a global scale and the [ab]use of performers attached to this 'market' is immeasurable. The sampling and mash-up business is huge yet for some reason it goes by without much notice and very little in the way of reimbursement [oil] for the engine, least of all any actual accounting". 

Thanks, Les!