Friday fantasies

Have you checked the IPKat's list of Forthcoming Events? There's plenty coming up, as you can see from the side-bar on the IPKat's front page. It gets a bit quiet over Christmas, but January's only just around the corner.


Are you IP-savvy, as fit as a fiddle and always carry an umbrella in case it rains? If so, the United Kingdom's IPO has a job for you as Senior Policy Advisor, International Policy on IP, Public Health and Climate Change. The post is based in London, not Newport, so you can't escape the IPKat's attention by blending in with the local sheep ... Duties include representing the IPO

"... in relevant international meetings for example at the World Health Organis[z]ation and the World Intellectual Property Office [is this a new competitor for the World Intellectual Property Organization, or perhaps a breakaway group of dissidents?]. The job will involve regular lobbying of inter-governmental contacts in Europe and elsewhere, and meeting with key players [it's those pianists again!] from non-governmental organisations and the pharmaceutical industry. It will be particularly important to build good relationships with key stakeholders like the pharmaceutical industry; ...".

The job is yours and the salary ranges from £28,855 to £36,527 (plus a London Weighting Allowance of £3,200). Or you can drive a tube train on the London Underground for £40,000.

A little bird tells the IPKat that, following the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Communities in the smell-alike trade mark dilution dispute in Case C-487/07 L’Oréal SA, Lancôme parfums et beauté & Cie SNC and Laboratoire Garnier & Cie v Bellure NV, Malaika Investments Ltd, trading as ‘Honey pot cosmetic & Perfumery Sales’ and Starion International Ltd (see the IPKat's comment here; Dirk Visser here; Mats Björkenfeldt here), the case is returning to the Court of Appeal, England and Wales, on 1 or 2 March 2010. The team lined up for this purpose is Lord Neuberger MR, Lady Justice Arden and Lord Justice Sullivan. How exciting, says the IPKat! But I wanted Lord Justice Jacob, wails a distraught Merpel ...

Slightly disconcerted, the IPKat discovers via YouTube that he is not alone. There is, it seems, another IPKat out there, or rather an IPKAT ...

In answer to a question that people keep asking him, the IPKat does not yet know the exact form of the questions which the Court of Appeal, England and Wales, is proposing to refer to the Court of Justice of the European Communities in Nokia v HMRC (see earlier posts here and here), but you can be sure that, once he does know, he'll share the information with all his readers.

The IPKat's informat Joris Peels (Shapeways) has tipped him off, via Edward Tufte, that Microsoft has applied for a US patent for sparklines. Edward -- reputedly the inventor of sparklines, asks, what can I do?


While her enthusiasm for fashion is matched only by her unfathomable depth of knowledge of it, Merpel has never felt sufficiently confident to nominate men's underpants as her special subject for Mastermind. Having said that, she's always willing to learn and found the Guardian's report of a recent Debenhams survey on male under-apparel ("What do men's pants say about them?") quite engrossing.

Right: inexperienced male purchasers of underwear look in vain for designer labels on garments that aren't big enough to have room for them.

The headline itself stopped her dead in her tracks: we now have Intelligent Clothing -- but pants that talk? Do they merely respond to polite inquiries as to the comfort and convenience of their occupant, or do they perhaps initiative dialogue at times of stress or malfunction? Tearing herself away from this speculation, Merpel discovered from the article that

* the average 23-year-old allegedly buys up to 31 pairs a year "of all styles, tightness and colours";

* even 40-year-olds manage a dozen pairs in as many months;

* once a male reaches 44, by which time he will have purchased an estimated 284 pairs, he presumably surrenders or delegates the task to the most appropriate woman in his life.

Statistics like this are incredibly useful for the clothing industry. If nothing else, in a market where suppliers are plentiful and profit margins -- unless you're lucky -- rock bottom, it helps to know how many items to manufacture for your intended market. Pitching a branded product to current loyal customers and future converts can also be improved with this knowledge: 'his and hers' packages might be worth a try for the more mature customer, perhaps. Merpel's not surprised, though, that men buy so many pairs of underpants. They could reduce this number very substantially by the simple expedient of remembering where they last left them.