Monday miscellany

Posting of comments: a new Kat policy. In order to make it easier to follow the discussions and threads of debate which appear in the readers' comments section beneath each blogpost, the IPKat has initiated a new policy -- comment-posters are asked to identify themselves via a pseudonym if they don't want to use their own names, since there are far too many people called "Anonymous" and can be difficult-to-impossible to work out which Anonymous is which.  The new policy comes fully into effect a week from now, on Monday 7 September.  Click here for a fuller explanation.

The IP Factor cometh.  Here's a final reminder that tomorrow, Tuesday 1 September, fellow IP blogger and patent attorney Michael Factor will be joining sundry friends at The Old Nick, Sandland Street, Holborn for a pleasant chat about ethics and the intellectual property professions. The time: 5 pm till 7 pm.  Michael. incidentally, is over in England to participate in a conference which is being held at St Edmund's College, Cambridge, on 4 to 5 September on "Patents on Life: through the lenses of law, religious faith and social justice".

Getting to the office on a winter morning
can be an invigorating experience ...

Interested in working in economics & IP?  The Kats' friends at the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) are in need of some quality company to keep them amused during the long, snowy nights of a Geneva winter.  Accordingly, and having nothing better to do, they are advertising a two-year post of Senior Economist in their Creative Economy section [Merpel is assured that this is not a euphemism for Accounts]. The post holder will focus on copyright and work with Carsten Fink and his team of cool cats [economists and statisticians: well, that figures ...]. The closing date for applications is 25 September.  Since attractive jobs for IP-friendly economists are available for applicants only a little more frequently than the Presidency of FIFA, this Kat expects that there will be many, many applicants.  Merpel assumes that, if the number of applications greatly exceeds the number of positions available, market forces will ensure that this will be reflected in a correspondingly lower salary.  Click here for application details.

Around the weblogs. The 1709 Blog carries an update on last year's Copyright Literacy Survey and subsequent developments -- and on a chance to play Copyright the Card Game. The same blog features John Enser's observations on the next bout of Euro-consultations, these being on the Satellite and Cable Directive, attractively branded "SatCab" (Eleonora's Katpost on SatCab and its possible implications for geoblocking can be found here).  However, pride of place among recent IP blogposts belongs to the must-read piece by Barbara Cookson on SOLO IP entitled "Mis-sold Community Trade Marks": Barbara makes a valid point very well, and this Kat hopes that Europe's judges, legislators and businesses take note of it.