Friday fantasies

Forthcoming events.  As usual, the Kats exhort you to check out the conferences, seminars and other attractions for the IP community, listed here.  Recent additions include the 20 November "Unification of Copyright" seminar co-hosted by the Bangor Law School and BLACA which is previewed here, and the free "Innovation to Investment" seminar on 25 September -- ideal for start-ups and their advisers -- which gets a write-up here.

The best way to tell if a lady is
saddle-sore is to look at her face ...

Remember to give generously.  Back in July this Kat mentioned that Sarah Cole, the IBC event organiser who runs the annual IP Summer School, held in Downing College, Cambridge, was busying herself with raising money for a most deserving cause.  To recap, Sarah's mum, who has multiple sclerosis, has derived great benefit from the South Wales MS Therapy Centre. Sarah has committed herself to cycling 280 miles across three European cities in order to raise cash to fund new facilities for the Centre. Not enough readers have donated yet, so can those of you who still have some cash in hand click through to Sarah's Virgin Money Giving page, here. UK taxpayers are entitled to Gift Aid tax relief. Merpel thinks that Sarah could have saved herself some trouble by finding three European cities that were a bit closer together. Can readers advise as to which three European cities would have given her the shortest route, assuming that she has to get back to the place she starts from?

But did the tablets have the right
market authorisation credentials ...?

Around the weblogs 1. Items on The SPC Blog don't often get a mention here, especially when they are only office decisions on patent term extension rather than full-blown court rulings, when they're several months old and when they have anything to do with supplementary protection certificates for patents -- but the Icahn (Mount Sinai) application (here), has plenty of content to consider -- including the question whether a pharmaceutical product patent extension covering Fabrazyme can be based on a process claim.  The Aistemos blog asks what sort of business Nokia has become, after its recent patent deals with Microsoft and Lucent-Alcatel, and on a US variation of the heatedly-discussed theme of damages for infringement of a subsequently invalidated registered right. On IP Finance there are two fresh posts on standard-essential patents and royalties: one from a legal perspective by Kevin Winters, the other from a more commercial point of view by Keith Mallinson. On SOLO IP, Barbara Cookson writes on a money matter of a rather different and (for British practitioners) more painful variety: the amount that members of the patent and trade mark professional have to pay for the privilege of being regulated professions. Surprisingly, up to the time this round-up was posted, no readers' comments had been posted on that article.

Around the weblogs 2. IP Tango's Patricia Covarrubia introduces us to the point at which religion, ideas, expression and copyright intersect in Peru.  The jiplp blog offers four more IP books for review -- if you can put in your bid to review them by Wednesday, and also a note by Kevin Winters (again!) on whether a bona fide belief that someone else's patent is invalid is a good defence in a US action for induced infringement. Class 46 carries a post by Gino van Roeyen on some absolutely riveting Dutch litigation on the proposition that "Stoli is Stolichnaya like Coke is Coca-Cola" and the targeting of drinks for the LGBT community.