Wednesday whimsies

This Kat is delighted to have heard through one of his favourite grapevines that the truly excellent Mark Anderson, IP Draughts blogger and founder of Anderson Law, has been appointed to be chair of the Law Society for England and Wales's Intellectual Property Law Committee with effect from 1 September, taking over from Katfriend and IP activist Isabel Davies. Here's a reminder for readers too: the Law Society is advertising for more Committee members. If you want to be there and do that, click here for further details and remember to apply by this Thursday, that is to say TOMORROW, which may very well be TODAY by the time you read this: 19 March.

Congratulations, IP Finance.  The IP Finance weblog, founded in 2008, has now notched up its one millionth page-view. This blog, which has 1,530 email subscribers, has over 1,250 searchable items on its database of blogposts. Team members include two Kats: Jeremy and Neil. However, the team is always on the look-out for more talent so, if you are interested in writing about that fascinating area where IP meets money, do contact Jeremy here and let him know.

It is with pleasure that this Kat can confirm that he has heard from his friends at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) that things are happening in the Kingdom of Cambodia when it comes to the processing and grant of international trade mark applications. Earlier this month, Cambodia deposited its instrument of accession to the Madrid Protocol, with the proviso that the time limit of one year to exercise the right to notify a refusal of protection of an international application is replaced by 18 months. The Madrid Protocol enters into force for Cambodia on 5 June.

Around the weblogs. C.E. Petit's Scrivener's Error provides much food for thought and many a challenging blogpost. Here's "Blurred Yellow Lines in the Snow", the author's take on the Thicke-Gaye Blurred Lines litigation, which has left many IP experts gasping.  Elsewhere, it has been a pre-General Election Budget Day in the (still) United Kingdom. What does this mean for IP? IP Finance's Anne Fairpo gives an IP-friendly round-up here. Following Christian Tenkhoff's guest Katpost on the Community trade mark tussle over the registrability of the word GREENWORLD, here, Tiina Komppa on the MARQUES Class 46 weblog tells the tale of GREEN SMOKE, a Finnish saga in which many of the same issues relating to the connotations of the word "green" when followed by a descriptive term were raised.

Visegrad Group. Here's some exciting news from Eastern Europe, via Katfriend, scholar and fellow blogger Martin Husovec (Katpat!). According to "The Visegrad Group (V4) Countries Establish a Joint Patent Institute", here, representatives of the industrial property offices of the four V4 member states -- the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary and Poland) have signed an Agreement to run the Visegrad Patent Institute as a non-governmental organisation with the aim to promote innovation and increase competitiveness in the region through "better and less expensive protection of innovation that originates in the V4 countries". Advantages are that

• local patent applicants can enjoy the opportunity to communicate in their mother tongue;
• the predicted level of fees for a patent application submission is expected to drop 25% for companies and 37% for Kats and humans (thismay even contribute to a growing number of international applications from the V4 countries);
• small and medium enterprises, universities and research organizations from the region will have an opportunity to make more effective use of the system for international applications for inventions and technical solutions under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. 

Hold on, though -- there are still some formalities to sort out. The Visegrad Patent Institute will begin operating as a body for international searches and for international preliminary examination after its formal appointment by the Assembly of the International Patent Cooperation Union and its approval by the General Assembly of member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).