Monday meanderings

With some trepidation, IPKat team member Jeremy is taking the plunge and entering into the world of Twitter. All twittered content will be strictly IP-related. You can follow it here: http://twitter.com/Ipkat. If nothing interesting initially emerges, please be patient: it takes time for a Kat to screw up its courage where these new technologies are concerned ...


Reminder: registrations are now coming in for the first-ever CLT one-day conference, "Intellectual Property in the Education Sector: meeting the challenges of changing times". This event takes place on Thursday 19 March, in Central London. You can read the programme, which has the booking arrangements, here. The conference competition, for which the prize is free registration (worth £495 + VAT -- and with a decent lunch thrown in), is to compose a haiku in the traditional Japanese style, connecting the subjects of intellectual property and education. There are two further conditions: (i) no references must be made to cats or Kats and (ii) there are to be absolutely no arguments as to what constitutes a haiku. The deadline is Sunday 8 March, midnight (Greenwich Mean Time) and entries should be emailed to the IPKat here with the subject line "Educomp".  Some of the early entries are hilarious; let's have yours too.



Above: three of the speakers from Trade Marks on the Downturn (left to right): Stephen Reese, Neil Wilkof, Larry Cohen

Last week the Trade Marks on the Downturn seminar drew an attentive audience of over 60 participants to Hardwicke Building, to discuss various problems faced by trade mark owners and their licensees during the current economic difficulties. The IPKat had hoped to publish a report on this seminar, but he was right in the middle of everything and didn't have time to take notes. He hopes to publish all the speakers' PowerPoints, but the only set he has received so far is "Trade Mark Licences & Termination", a review by Stephen Reese (Olswang) of the issues as seen from both the licensor's and licensee's perspective. If you'd like sight of these PowerPoints, please email IPKat team blogger Jeremy here.


The IPKat is pleased to inform his readers that the Intellectual Property Office in the UK has just launched a new free online service to help "artists, inventors, sole traders and small and medium sized businesses identify, protect and commercially exploit their Intellectual Property (IP)". This is the IP Healthcheck, a diagnostic tool which is aimed at helping lay users discover (i) if they have IP to protect, (ii) whether it's theirs or someone else's, (iii) how to protect it -- and whether it's worth protecting, and (iv) how to exploit that IP commercially. You can try it out here; feedback should be emailed here.