Friday fantasies

A message for all scammers

What a relief!  On Tuesday, in “Swedish-Seychelles scammer stuffed -- but has he really triumphed?”, this Kat posted news of the UK Intellectual Property Office’s triumph in court against a scam operation, IPAL, that made itself look like the IPO in order to solicit custom for its overpriced services. This post indicated that injunctive relief was not sought.  He has since heard from Katfriend James Thomson at the IPO that injunctive relief was sought and obtained – though the judgment makes no mention of this.  James adds:

“IPAL had ceased trading before the case came to court. However, the company and its Director have been ordered not to conduct any relevant business under the company name, or any other name similar to the IPO, or otherwise to pass themselves off as the IPO in future. They have also been ordered to hand over their domain name to the IPO and to provide various other forms of relief”.

Not to mention Super
Enrico and Super Gaetano ...

Video games at lunchtime.  Katfriend Enrico Bonadio (City University) has been bursting to let everyone know that, on Wednesday 2 December, between the agreeably lunchworthy hours of 12.30 and 2.30 pm, there will be a research seminar at the City Law School entitled "Video Games and Intellectual Property: The Intricate relationship between Interactivity and Creativity". The speaker is Dr Gaetano Dimita, a relatively near neighbour from Queen Mary University. Details are available here.

Solar photovoltaic patents at teatime.  From this Kat’s friends at Oxfirst comes news of a fascinating free webinar in which Dr Radomir Tylecote (Imperial College) will be talking about his doctoral research on China's policy for state-driven solar photovoltaic patenting --  and why it doesn’t appear to have worked.  The date: Friday 27 November at 3.00 pm GMT. To register, just click here.

Reflecting on turkeys at dinnertime.  Christmas dinner at the House of Lords is never more entertaining and rarely more instructive than when the diners are members of TIPLO, The Intellectual Property Lawyers Organisation.  The subject under discussion is “Reflections from the front line” and the person doing the reflecting is recently-appointed Chancery Division judge Mr Justice Carr.  You won’t have to wait long: the TIPLO dinner is on 1 December. Tickets must be bought, and presumably paid for, by 24 November.  Further details may be found here.

A major key.  The IP Key project is the new EU-China IP cooperation project co-funded by the European Union and the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM). This project focuses on facilitating the development of an increasingly effective, fair and transparent intellectual property rights framework in China. This involves conducting a number of activities with Chinese agencies and research projects on behalf of European industry. The list of activities can be found at www.ipkey.org.  IPKat readers who have an interest in Chinese IP issues are invited to visit the newly-launched 10 year anniversary website www.10ip.org which seeks to celebrate the achievements of the EU-China IP Dialogue mechanism [before you take a look, says Merpel, can you name any of them?].