Monday miscellany

Old Nick. Regular readers will know that the IPKat, Merpel and other friends like to congregate at The Old Nick, Sandland Street, Holborn, from time to time in order to while away the late afternoon while discussing one or more fascinating intellectual property issues in the company of each other, some readers and a refreshing pint of Badger.  There will be one such gathering -- to which all are invited -- on Tuesday 1 September when they will be joined by a visiting blogger, Michael Factor (of the IP Factor weblog), who will be initiating discussion on what might just be a good topic, intellectual property practice and professional ethics.  Rumour has it that some Michael might even be sponsoring a drink or two, for specially deserving souls. There's no need to RSVP: we'll be there from 5 pm to 7 pm, in the back room unless someone else has grabbed it first.

Around the weblogs 1.  Mark Anderson's IP Draughts blog has a great track record for asking those uncomfortable questions, the latest of which is "strategy meetings -- are they worth having?"  From the mere fact that Mark asks, you can guess that he has something interesting to say on this topic. Riccardo Ciullo's IP Wisely blog asks why there can't be a "revocation option" for immoral trade marks in Europe rather than the nuclear option of total cancellation, to suit the circumstances of marks that start off okay but subsequently become tainted. This Kat is not convinced that such a need exists, but he is open to argument and looks forward to seeing if Riccardo's blogpost attracts any. Talking of arguments, Mark Summerfield may have flagged what might be a big forthcoming first-to-invent row over the CRISPR DNA editing tool, well worth reading on Patentology here.

Around the weblogs 2.  What does LUXOR mean to you? Do you read it as a combination of "lux", meaning light in Latin, and "or", as in the French word for gold (as in Ballon d'Or) -- or is it an Egyptian place name? The Swiss Federal Administrative Court concluded that the word LUXOR for which Novartis sought registration for ophthalmic devices was a place name, while the figurative version of it (shown on the right) would leave consumers under no illusion as to its "lux" + "or" composition: guest Kat Mark Schweizer explains on the Class 46 blog here.

Minor annoyance. Like anyone else who works on the social media, the IPKat and Merpel are exposed to all sorts of communications, many of which are thoroughly welcome and greatly appreciated -- even if they can't always turn them into blogposts -- and others of which are not. LinkedIn is providing a good deal of irritation these days in the form of false invitations to connect. Several times in the past month this Kat has received invitations from people purporting to be brand managers, advertising and marketing consultants, design consultants and the like: after checking them out carefully and linking with them, he has discovered that they were nothing other than SEO salespersons in disguise.  Does this strategy really bring in business, he wonders?