Monday miscellany

Back from #INTA15.  IPKat team members Jeremy and Neil are now both back from this year's International Trademark Association (INTA) Meeting in San Diego (on which see reflections here, here, here, here and here).  This Kat would like to take this opportunity to thank INTA for its efforts in putting together a plausible and option-rich programme for nearly 10,000 people and for handling the logistics so well. He'd also like to thank the many people who sent him some lovely emails during the event, expressing their appreciation of the blog's coverage of this important event.

Putting the "Intern" in "International".  Still on the subject of the INTA, its Europe Office informs the Kats that it is looking for an intern.  This internship is in the field of “membership and communications” (in other words it's not a legal role as such), and the successful applicant must be a student enrolled at a university which can provide an internship agreement. In keeping with normal INTA policy ("Don't spend a penny more than you have to"), there is no remuneration for the lucky candidate, though there is some better news too: (i) INTA isn't actually charging for the privilege of taking the internship and (ii) there is even the promise of an "allowance".  Click here for further details and, if you're interested, you'd better get a move on since the closing date for applications is 22 May 2015.

Around the weblogs. The Demanding Mistress, J. Sai Deepak's Indian IP blog, has an interesting little piece on the current state of play regarding the awarding of compensatory (or should that be "exemplary") costs against vexatious claims and defences, here. Elsewhere, if you didn't know that the US Constitution has a "dormant" Commerce Clause, you might like to know that it has woken from its slumbers and struck down the California Resale Royalty Act, as explained by Marie-Andrée Weiss on the 1709 Blog. On IP Tango, the highly productive Patricia Covarrubia notes the Parliamentary debate in Chile over the application of authors' moral rights to the audiovisual media. Michael Thesen (PatLit) writes on a recent German ruling on grounds for revocation of a patent under Article 138 of the European Patent Convention (where subject matter extends beyond the patent as applied for): are the are the conditions for revocation sufficient, or merely necessary?  Finally, in Shadowland, Laetitia Lagarde on Class 46 picks up a General Court ruling on a Community trade mark opposition that sees BusinessShadow ward off an application for SHADOW COMPLEX, both being for computer software.

Scotland may not yet have secured its independence from the United Kingdom, but at least it has its own intellectual property events.  The WS Society (Scotland's independent association for lawyers and one of the oldest professional bodies in the world, with over 500 years of history) is putting on "IP Law – Inside and Out" on the morning of Thursday 25 June in the Signet Library, Edinburgh. Carolyn Jameson (in-house counsel with Scotland's first $1 billion web company, Skyscanner) is the keynote speaker; Katfriend Gill Grassie (Brodies) is in the chair. All sorts of experts are on the programme, including none other than fellow Kat Eleonora.  Full details are just one McClick away, here.

Artists' resale rights Down Under. Returning to the subject of artists' resale rights (mentioned in Around the weblogs, for those who read their blogposts bottom-upwards), this Kat is indebted to his artistic Australian friend John Walker for the news that Australia's next federal budget is due tomorrow, Tuesday 12 May. John tells the Kats that, if the Australian version of resale rights is to continue, it will need a further infusion of funds, given the nature of its management costs; the contract for CAL's management scheme is also up for renewal. The Kats, along with the scheme's supporters and critics, will watch with interest to find out what will happen.