Friday fantasies

"Tom, Tom the piper's son
Stole a tune and away he ran.
But now he's in a dreadful plight --
He forgot about the copyright!"

IP and Music is among the conference topics you can find listed on the IPKat's Forthcoming Events sidebar. Don't forget to check it out!

Around the blogs ... even if you're from China. It seems that the IPKat's weblog is not the only one to be blocked in China. The block apparently extends to all blogs hosted by Google, according to one Chinese reader. While some cunning souls seem to have found "ways" to circumvent the block, others merely content themselves by reading the email circulars -- which are not blocked.

Another list of ten juicy topics for which the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP) seeks authors appears on the jiplp weblog here. If you'd like to write on one of these topics, just follow the simple instructions. And while we're on the subject of authors, it is not generally known that IPKat team member Jeremy is also the Intellectual Property panellist on the board of the Journal of Business Law (JBL). If you've written -- or are writing -- a piece which might suit that publication (and case notes are particularly welcome), email Jeremy here and let him know.

The fact that parallel importation of branded goods into the United Kingdom has been a subject of both interest and concern this week (see earlier IPKat post here) has led a couple of readers to email the IPKat to ask him what the position is with regard to the United States -- where what we call parallel importations are known as "gray goods". The Kat wouldn't dare answer these questions since his competence stops somewhere in the East Atlantic, but he has a handy little book by David R. Sugden, Gray Markets: Prevention, Detection and Litigation, published in the US by Oxford University Press last year. The book offers a good deal of legal and commercial information, breaking the subject down by industry and commercial sectors most affected. At US$ 185 for its 342 pages, it's rather more expensive than the average US paperback law book, but if you or you client have got a gray goods problem, it's a snip. Incidentally, the author doesn't shy away from eBay issues and all sorts of other tough topics. Web page: here.

Taking the Mick? Here's another poetic gem from Tony McStea, who tells the IPKat, "I write very strange responses to office actions". Here is one such response; wisely, the US attorneys involved in this matter removed the following before responding to the office (The Department of Cultural Allusions states that, if you were born too late to remember 1965 or have a poor recollection of iconic songs of that era, the sheer length and detail of this Wikipedia entry will soon put you right):

I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get past office action
Tho' I've tried
I confide
All I've plied
Simply died
I can't get no!
I can't get no!

While I'm workin' at my desk
Comes a man who's on the Internet
Says how great 'Murr'can patents be
But he couldn't be a man 'cos he doesn't have
The same Examiner as me
I can't get no!
No! No! No!

Boo hoo hoo!
I'm in the poo!

I can't get past office action
I’m bein’ driven to distraction
Can’t abide
No scope wide
I confide
Hurts my pride
I can't get no!
I can't get no!

While my head is in a whirl
I’m amending this and I’m CIPping that
While my toys from buggy hurl
There is no point interviewing next week
‘Cos I see I’m on a losing streak
I can't get no!
No! No! No! etc. etc.

Prior art: this illustration (above right) is of The Rolling Stones before they had wrinkles -- and you have to be very old to remember them looking like that.