Friday fantasies

Around the weblogs.  Congratulations to Art & Artifice for notching up its 400th email subscriber. A different sort of congratulations goes to the design enthusiasts at Simmons & Simmons who not only managed to get the INTA Roundtable on the Protection of Product Shapes up and running, against all the odds (click here for explanation) but even managed to write up a brief report for the edification of Class 99 blog readers, thanks to Will Cobbett, here [and many thanks, once again, to IPKat weblog readers who helped ...]. Elsewhere, Mike Mireles has been feeding some great material on to the revitalised IP Finance blog (here and here, for example) and Désirée Fields has delivered a salutary warning (is there any other kind, wonders Merpel) to MARQUES Class 46 readers about over-reliance on secondary sources of trade mark law without going back to check ...

Coming very soon. Following this week's decision from the UK Supreme Court in Schutz v Werit, noted here on the IPKat, AIPPI UK is delighted to announce a rapid reaction forum on TUESDAY 19 MARCH AT 5:30pm -- an earlier start than usual, so don't spent too long in the pub first. The forum will be chaired by Mr Justice Floyd who heard the case at first instance, and be introduced by Daniel Brook who was the partner at Hogan Lovells with conduct of the case. We hope to have a panel discussion featuring barristers from both parties. The forum will be free to members and non-members, and take place at Freshfields starting at 5:30. Details and bookings at aippiuk-werit.eventbrite.co.uk. Hosting the forum, Freshfields reminds those attending that it has entrances on Fleet Street and Tudor Street: the entrance used will depend on the number of reservations (registrants will receive an update email about this with the event reminder on Monday evening).

The print version is still valid
for making hats ...

Meanwhile, here's good news for paper-haters: the Council of the European Union has finally adopted Council Regulation on the electronic publication of the Official Journal of the European Union (216/2013), which you can read here. In short, while an electronic version of the Official Journal has been around since 1998, it has always been the little sister of the messy, environmentally hostile and unlovable paper version.  Now, to the Kats' delight, the online edition is to be the authentic and legally binding one. The print version will still be printed, but will only be authentic when we run out of electricity. Merpel notes that, in the past, very little in the way of hyperlinks could be found on the electronic version of the OJs. Thus, for example, where a Regulation was passed which amended an earlier Geographical Indication Regulation, there was no convenient click-through to facilitate comparison; she hopes that this omission will be duly addressed soon (by which she means "now").