Friday fantasies

Some bleary-eyed Kats and their friends are now sleeping off the worst effects of the INTA Meeting in Boston, but they could not in all conscience curl up in their baskets without first remembering to remind their readers to check out the Forthcoming Events slot on the IPKat's front page ... and to all readers who are about to celebrate a public holiday this week the IPKat says "Have a great time!"

Baroness (Judith) Wilcox has joined the United Kingdom's new government as Parliamentary Secretary for Business, Innovation and Skills -- which means that she will find herself having to deal with IP. Good news is that Baroness J has at least some things in her CV to suggest she may have some clue as to what the subject is about: she chaired the National Consumer Council for six years and has a business background. Like all Kats she enjoys bird-watching. We wish her good luck.


Just out. The June 2010 issue of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice has just been published (click here for the JIPLP website, where you can access its contents, and herefor its weblog). Making its debut at the INTA Meeting in Boston was the inaugural issue ofIntellectual Property Magazine, the consolidated successor to Trademark World, Patent Worldand Copyright World; click here for further details. Issue 2/10 of Sweet & Maxwell's International Sports Law Review carries a good analysis by Craig Callery of the confidentiality and sponsorship concerns raised when sports celebrities (in this case former England soccer captain John Terry, left) fail to prevent disclosure of intimate and detrimental personal details (the analysis started life as a blog post which you can read here). Another Sweet & Maxwell title, the European Intellectual Property Review (EIPR) has also brought out its June issue, which leads with Christophe Geiger's speculation as to whether the Treaty of Lisbon has ushered in a New European Legal Order for intellectual property.

Some amusement and even a little provocation can be derived from pursuing this link to the Raven King's music-and-verse production "Copyright; SecondLife & YouTube" (thank you, Celestial Elf, for letting us know). The Raven King's lyrics begin as follows:

"So many here have spoken of their terror and dismay,
Over copyright useage at your You Tube today,
Over the Terms and Conditions with which they may,
Make, share and render the adventures that they,
Have thought, seen and constructed in Our Second Life far away".

Around the blogs. Congratulations to The SPC Blog, which has now attracted no fewer than800 email subscribers to its highly specialised output on patent term extensions. Also, a pat on the back for The Trademark Review Blog, where Adam Smith has been so swiftly off the mark with news that European trade marks which have undergone examination based only on absolute grounds of refusal will be welcomed into the Trademark Clearinghouse, proposed by ICANN for the new generic top-level domain (gTLD) space. The Smart E-Discovery Blogfrom Millnet, as its name suggests, looks as though it has some useful content for many IPKat readers.