Monday miscellany

Are you creating or disseminating information about IP? This year's IP Publishers and Editors Lunch on Wednesday 25 November is starting to fill up nicely, with people travelling from France and Germany to join this IPKat-led event, kindly hosted in the London office of Veale Wasburgh Vizards.  We're up to 25 registrants already and hope to beat the 50+ who came last year.  Keynote speaker this year is fellow blogger, editor and IP commentator Peter Groves. So, if you are involved in any facet of IP publishing, editing, blogging, press-releasing or information production and think this event might be for you, just click here for details.  It's fun -- and it's free!

When in Rome ... "The Geographical Names Conference: Protecting and Enforcing Geographic Names, GIs, Trademarks and Domain Names" is a conference that is very close to this Kat's heart.  He was closely involved with it in the planning stages and, were it not for post-retirement family commitments, he would have been participating in it too.  It's run by the International Trademark Association (INTA) and will be held in the beautiful city of Rome on 10 and 11 December.  Incidentally, it's not a US event or a European one -- its scope is international, with participation from major international agencies and institutions as well as representatives drawn from business and the professions.  Do check out the programme here. The early registration discount expires this coming Friday, 30 October so, if you know you'll be going, why not sign up now and save yourself some money?

Angela Merkel and a couple of Greek politicians

Around the weblogs 1. "10 points to look for in a draft agreement", offers Mark Anderson of IP Draughts (or maybe that should be 'Drafts' ...) -- though as usual Mark delivers a little more than he promises, in a piece honed for the special interests of an IP readership.  On the Class 46 European trade mark blog, Tomasz Rychlicki relates the challenge facing Poland today as it eases itself into a new opposition procedure for trade mark applications, to replace the cumbersome and ineffective ex officio examination of all applications on absolute and relative grounds for refusal. On the same blog, and in somewhat lighter vein -- though with overtones of great seriousness -- is guest Kat Nikos's post on the use of PLAYMOBIL characters as a means of depicting social comment and the possible effect of that use upon the brand itself.

Fancy a little paclitaxel ...?

Around the weblogs 2. So far as this Kat is concerned, the blog of the month is "For Pete's Sake! The tribulations of an honest not-for-profit self-publisher", which you will find on the 1709 Blog here. The Pete in question is Peter McDonald, a thoughtful and highly articulate New Zealander whose tale will resonate with many a reader who has sought to do the right thing and come up against the law or, worse, those who invoke it. Elsewhere the SPC Blog introduces readers to a bold attempt to extend a patent for paclitaxel (a.k.a. Taxol) for preventing restenosis [a recurrent narrowing of a blood vessel] by trying to persuade the UK Intellectual Property Office that there was no difference between a medical device and a medicinal product -- which, for most of us, there isn't.  Finally Aistemos picks up the work currently being done in mapping and visualisation by the Oxford Internet Institute and points to its possible relevance to IP analytics.

Revised Guidelines for Examination. The European Patent Office has announced the revised version of its Guidelines for Examination, which will apply as from 1 November 2015. Until then, the November 2014 edition of the Guidelines remains valid.  You can check out the Revised Guidelines here (Katpat to Chris Torrero for the link).