Thursday thingies

Will the daleks come
to Dr Who's aid ...?

Around the weblogs. First, a katpat to fellow blogger Michael Factor for drawing this Kat's attention to a delightful piece on Sharpened Sticks on why Apple is suing Dr Who.  Elsewhere, Mark Anderson's excellent IP Draughts offers a list of 10 tips for successful contract negotiations, to which Kat-readers may wish to add more than a couple of their own. Over on Class 46, the focus is on MARMITE's controversial advertisement campaign which parodies the activities of animal welfare organisations: is this a risk too far for the love-it-or-loathe it brand?   Moving to PatLit, if you've ever wondered how far you can stretch the patience of the German patent system when it comes to late filing, Michael Thesen might be able to assist you.  Finally, if you can cast your mind back to the days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and we all had to know about pre-1972 United States copyright, and when youngsters happily danced to the innocent music of the Turtles [], this piece on the 1709 Blog by Ben Challis might appeal to you.

Those sidebar polls.  Getting on for 250 people have so far cast their comments on the suitability of "King & Wood Mallesons SJ Berwin" as a law firm name, and there are still six days to go. This Kat is a little perplexed, having now seen media releases from that firm which send out somewhat different messages: one says the firm is going to use that name, while the other suggests it's just a short-term proposition.  Fewer votes have so far been cast in the jiplp weblog's sidebar poll on what people understand when they see the words "Greek yoghurt" -- a phrase which has been bandied about quite a bit in the courts of England and Wales in recent times. 76 readers have voted, but there are still 23 days to go.  Finally, the Afro-IP poll on where the World Intellectual Property Organization should locate its proposed regional African office(s), with 126 votes cast and 8 days to go, shows Kenya marginally ahead of South Africa, while Zimbabwe is a surprising third, extending its lead over fourth-placed Nigeria in a field of 16 countries.

IBC Intellectual Property Law Summer School. IPKat blogmeister Jeremy has been compiling a crafty cat-in-a-cup workshop for the Thursday of this year's IBC Intellectual Property Law Summer School, which will be held in Downing College, Cambridge, from 19 to 23 August The workshop involves dealing with a problem that spans trade marks, copyright, designs and unwarranted threats, among other things, and it has been polished up by none other than celebrated IP litigator Isabel Davies who, together with David Keeling will be supervising the workshop session.  He hopes he'll be seeing a good few of you there. If you've not yet booked but are still thinking of doing so, IPKat readers can click here to get their 20% registration discount -- so long as you quote the special VIP Katcode FKW82373IPKBP. 

IP Publishers' and editors' meeting. While the sun is shining and everything in the garden is decidedly rosy, it's hard to remember that we will soon be in the soggy grip of cold and rainy winter. But what better way is there to warm oneself than to attend the annual IP publishers' and editors' meeting? If you are part of the IP publishing scene (whether with the social media or what this Kat likes to think of as the antisocial media), you will be more than welcome. The date of this year's meeting is Tuesday 26 November and, as usual, it will run from 12.30 pm to 2.30 pm. Details of this year's venue and guest speaker are still in the course of negotiation, but will be publicised as soon as possible. Last year's attendance of around 60, from several countries and all sorts of print and online publishers and publications, was our best ever -- but let's see if we can beat that figure this year!



Here's a new book you might want to take a look at: it's Pharmaceutical Innovation, Competition And Patent Law: a Trilateral Perspective, edited by Max Planck Director Josef Drexl and Finnish scholar Nari Lee. Published by Edward Elgar, this book offers the following delightful prospects:

"Public health, safety and access to reasonably priced medicine are common policy goals of pharmaceutical regulations. As both the context for innovation and competitive structure change, industry actors dynamically challenge the balance between the incentive for protection and the achievement of those policy goals.

Considering the arguments from the perspectives of innovation, competition law and patent law, this book explores the difficult question of balancing protection with access, highlighting the difficulties in harmonization and coordination. The contributors to this book, including academics, judges and practitioners from Europe, the US and Japan, explore to what extent patent strategies and life-cycle management practices take advantage of patent laws and health-care regulation and disrupt the necessary balance between incentives for innovation and access to affordable medicine and health care".

A review will appear later this summer on the PatLit weblog. Meanwhile, further information about it may be obtained from its web page here.