Friday fantasies

Change of Tweet.  Many readers will by now be aware that the Twitter account of European trade mark organisation MARQUES has, following a technical hitch, just shifted from its old space at @MARQUES_IP to a brand new one at @marquesIP.  If you are a European trade mark owner, practitioner, consultant, student or enthusiast, do remember to follow the new account.  Oh, and if you are involved in design protection, that's part of the package too, since MARQUES addresses European design issues as well.

European Inventor Award survey.  With six days still to go in the IPKat's sidebar poll on the European Inventor Award, over 430 responses have already been received, and  nearly 40% of those responses agree with fellow Kat Darren's suggestion that the Award may actually be ultra vires.  While there is still plenty of time for further expressions of opinion, and the current lack of enthusiasm for the event may not reflect the final result, it is plain that the Award is not viewed as a particularly useful or attractive event by a large proportion of people who spend their time and practise their skills in the social media's IP space. The poll can be found at the top left corner of this weblog's home page, together with a brief explanation. Do vote, whatever your opinion -- we'd love to know which view of the Award turns out to be the winner!

Dumb and Dumber?  Thanks to Chris Torrero (katpat!) this Kat has learned from Ars Technica about a nasty surprise facing the Electronic Frontier Frontier (EFF) over its regular "Stupid Patent of the Month" (SPM) feature. Unlike the European Inventor Award, the SPM is not a coveted award for which contestants vie, though neither the Award nor the SPM is an indication of likely commercial success. But to cut to the chase: the April 2015 SPM award went to Scott Horstemeyer, an Atlanta attorney and inventor holding 28 patents, who has commenced legal proceedings against the EFF and its lawyer for defamation. Given that both the EFF and its adversary appear to be motivated by matters of principle, this dispute has the potential to run and run.

The IP Enforcement Directive: an event.  This year's London seminar jointly held by the Journal of Intellectual Property Law (JIPLP) and leading German IP publication GRUR Int takes place on Tuesday 8 September in the Central London office of law firm Taylor Wessing.  The theme is the impact -- if any -- of the EU's Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive on the enforcement practices of national courts in Europe.  Speakers are Michael Edenborough QC and Wiebke Baars, and there will be the usual panel discussion, questions from the floor and refreshments.  Admission is free. Click here for details.

Around the weblogs. "IP Licensing and Taxation: What is “transfer” in “transfer of right to use goods”?" asks J. Sai Deepak on his Indian IP blog The Demanding Mistress, concluding [to the relief of many readers, this Kat imagines] that the grant of a non-exclusive right to use a trade mark does not, in his opinion, amount to “transfer of right to use the mark”.  IP Tango, via the excellent Patricia Covarrubia, records that Chile now has its very own protected prosciutto, while Afro-IP has been particularly busy: Kingsley Egbuonu is searching for influential African IP personalities to nominate for Managing IP's next Most Influential Persons list, while Isaac Rutenberg muses on utility models, giving a Kenyan perspective.

Brush Lee and friends ...

Around the weblogs 2. Over on the 1709 Blog, it's hard to imagine that new recruit hasn't been blogging copyright topics for years, since he has really taken to the medium: here's his latest offering on a non-'bog standard' case involving a yellow toilet brush called Brush Lee, not to mention a Naughty Tortoise -- though blog colleague Marie-Andrée Weiss's classic blogposts are never out of fashion: here's her latest, "French Highest Court “Casse” in Foldable Bag Copyright Infringement Case", on the sewing on the Pilage Bag, in a ruling that will have you in stitches ... and on the IP Finance blog, fellow Kat Neil Wilkof examines the commercial future (if any) in store for intellectual property rights in software in the Cloud. Finally, on the SOLO IP blog, Barbara Cookson reports on an increasingly popular pastime in England and Wales -- small track IP litigation in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, the so-called IPEC.