Friday flagrancies

Don't forget to give your responses to the INTA/Managing Intellectual Property trade mark poll. It might be absolutely harmless and entirely non-binding, but at least your opinion might cancel out the opinions of someone you disagree with ... and don't forget, MIP is publishing the results at the INTA Meeting in Chicago this April/May.


Talking of polls, it takes guts to expose your own business to the criticism of your clients - which is what corporate investigation outfit and counterfeit-hunters Carratu International has done. The survey responses (left) show that their clients rate them between outstanding (that's 54% of the turn-out), down to poor (3%) and very poor (1%). The IPKat notes that, with the company donating 50 pence to charity for every reply, the 671 respondents cost Carratu £335.50p. Merpel says, I hope they're remembering to use Gift Aid.


"Bridgeman versus Corel: Copyrighted Creativity or Commerce?" is the title of a conference held by Queen Mary, University of London, in conjunction with the Bridgeman Institute. The date is 3 May 2007. The programme is here. It's good value for money at just £50, inclusive of lunch. Don't miss it.


Quite out of the blue, the IPKat received an email from a German enterprise, Brandstock, claiming to offer the best way of finding out how much your professional IP fees are likely to be. Says the email:

"... the program is ... the best way for IP managers to get in touch with the world of IP service providers.

It also works the other way. To date, more than 1500 of these providers have registered with IP-CostCalculator's listing of associates, so as to get access to Brandstock's world-best IP customer base ...".

The IPKat is always suspicious of people who offer him benefits at no apparent cost, so he wonders if any of his readers have experiences of Brandstock that they would like him to publish on this weblog. If so, please send your comments here. To use the cost calculator, or to be added to the database, click here.