Wednesday whimsies

Dreadfully embarrassed the IPKat realises that, while his attention was elsewhere, Her Majesty the Queen announced her Birthday Honours on 12 June. Taking a belated peek, the Kat is delighted to see that at least one intellectual property personage has been given an award: John Alty, Chief Executive of the Intellectual Property Office, who is now a Companion of the Bath. John has only been running the IPO for a few months, so he must either (i) have done really well in a very short time or (ii) be getting his just deserts for whatever he was doing before he got there. Adds Merpel: it wouldn't be a case of mistaken identity, would it? There are no fewer than 37 John Altys in the UK. All the Kats congratulate John on his honour and ask readers to double-check the honours list in case they're missed anyone else out.

Thank you, Gerry Gavigan (IEE), for letting the IPKat have sight of this most educative link to ThinkGeek ("Officially Our Best-Ever Cease and Desist"). The subject is canned unicorn meat -- "The Other White Meat".

The IPKat, as is well known, is a great lover of IP rights -- and love is a many-splendoured thing. But when it gets out of control, love becomes a dangerous obsession ...

Someone is obviously disenchanted with the performance of the England national football team in the current World Cup tournament, as can be seen from the image below.

The big questions for IP fans are whether (i) the owner and any licensees of the rights in the characters featured in The Muppets may have grounds of action based on tarnishment of the reputation of these splendid creatures and (ii) Fifa will consider this to be an egregious act of ambush marketing in respect of which they will, given their well-known sense of humour, invoke the full range of criminal and civil sanctions as well as United Nations intervention.