Friday fiddlings

The website of the Court of Justice of the European Communities has lots of useful contact information, but the IPKat has been unable to find the contact details of anyone who is responsible for dealing with complaints. Can anyone tell him who is responsible? The IPKat thinks that if enough of us email the Court every time a decision is posted on the website in one or more languages that do not include English, we should at least be able to make our feelings felt. Helpful information should be posted below or sent to the IPKat here, please.

Right: this is Vassilios Skouris, President of the ECJ. He has such a kindly face and is obviously a great diplomat. Perhaps he can help us get our English translations.


Don't forget the meeting for sole and small IP practitioners next Wednesday (see here for details). It's now known that Mark Jefferiss from the UKIPO is coming along and will be saying something topical about the handling of UK trade mark applications: he's also bringing his ears with him and will listen attentively to any constructive comments.

Left: an okapi, perturbed over the likelihood of confusion between OKAPI and UKIPO ...


Read here in the Telegraph about how four US prisoners tried to escape from prison by copyrighting their names. The IPKat says, this can only happen in the United States. Merpel adds, how the miaouw do you copyright your name? This looks like another journalistic whoopsie based on IP concept confusion.

Right: it seems there were legal bars to this IP scam succeeding


Plagiarism can prove a point quite neatly. Frustrated novelist David Lassman has received wide media coverage, in the UK at least, for his stunt in sending chunks of Jane Austen's novels to publishers and literary agents, changing only the names, to see what their reactions would be. Only one of the eighteen recipients spotted what he'd done - Alex Bowler, assistant editor at Jonathan Cape. But he immediately destroyed his credibility among IP lawyers by writing:

"I suggest you reach for your copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I’d guess lives in close proximity to your typewriter and make sure that your opening pages don’t too closely mimic the book’s opening. After all, there is such a thing as plagiarism and I’d hate for you to get in any kind of trouble with Jane Austen’s estate".

Jane Austen died in 1817.