Friday fun

Another gem from The Onion: under the caption "Viacom Demands YouTube Pull 400,000 Ex-TV Viewers From Its Site", the satirical magazine writes:

"In a cease-and-desist letter sent to Google's attorneys last week, media conglomerate Viacom demanded that YouTube immediately pull 400,000 ex-TV viewers from its industry-leading video-sharing site.

Above right: couch potatoes, from the refreshingly amusing Bauel-Movement website

"These viewers clearly belong to Viacom and its related entertainment subsidiaries," stated the letter, which called the co-opted viewership "the result of an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars by our company." "Should YouTube fail to adequately address this blatant infringement, Viacom will not hesitate to assert its ownership rights to its intellectual property."

The letter threatened further legal action if all the 400,000 viewers in question are not removed from their desks and returned to their couches by the end of the week".

Duncan Bucknell's popular Lipitor scorecard now has its own web page. For those who are following the international litigation between Ranbaxy and Pfizer over the fate of the latter's patent, the scorecard is updated regularly and comes with helpful little comments.


Many thanks again, says the IPKat (and Merpel) for visiting our blog. Although February is the shortest month of the year, we received a new all-time record of 14,408 casual visitors to the site in addition to the 797 readers who get each posting by email. Last week the site received 3,938 hits. If you keep visiting, the IPKat and Merpel will do their level best to make sure your visit is worthwhile. And please don't feel shy about posting your comments - we learn from them even if we don't always agree with them.