Wednesday whimsies

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR THOSE FOLK WHO LIKE GETTING A SWIFT RESPONSE TO THEIR EMAILS: IPKat team member Jeremy is on his travels and won't have much access to his current and backlogged emails till Friday morning. If you are owed an email, please hang on in there -- you'll get a reply eventually.

WIPO is now broadcasting its own weather forecasts:
note the unusual concentric circles in the cloud formations

The IPKat is delighted to discover that the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has  taken   its next brave step into the world of social media by launching its new World IP Day Facebook page.  Says a source close to recent IPKat recruit Francis Purry, "We are encouraging IP Offices and the many other organisations which hold special events for World IP Day each year to post their activities on the Facebook page".  Merpel wonders what form this encouragement will take, and whether it will be efficacious.  In an apparently unrelated move, WIPO has also livened up the dull, mundane user-generated content of YouTube with some content of its own. 


Lingering with WIPO for a few more precious moments, the Kat can report that its Arbitration and Mediation Center is conducting an International Survey on Dispute Resolution in Technology Transactions.  According to the Center's Director Erik Wilbers, "the questionnaire has been developed with the support of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI), the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), the Fédération Internationale des Conseils en Propriété Industrielle (FICPI) and the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI) and in collaboration with in-house counsel and external experts in technology disputes from different jurisdictions and business areas" -- but that is no reason for you to refuse to participate in it (as this Kat has already done).  By way of incentive,

"The WIPO Center will provide you as a participating respondent with a preview of the Survey results prior to full publication. We would also be pleased to offer to you or to one of your colleagues access to the WIPO Center's Workshop for Mediators or Arbitration Workshop at a considerably reduced registration fee". [Merpel was hoping for 15% off her next mediation bill too ...]

The Survey webpage can be found here.  Enjoy!

Around the blogs. PatLit's PCC Page post this week -- the 23rd in the series -- is entitled "IPOff’s tentacles get some cross-examination?" (here). Apart from discussing cross-examination, this post also begs readers to believe the author when he says that the function of this series was not to show how difficult is the new system for litigating in the Patents County Court for England and Wales, but how easy. 

Before we get to the next round of litigation in the fashion v freedom dispute of Louis Vuitton v Nadia Plesner (here), we have had to await the outcome of Nadia Plesner v Judge Hensen.  There has been a little bit of Jens van den Brinksmanship, which has ended with Judge Hensen stepping down following Ms Plsener's challenge.  A new judge will now handle the injunction hearing on 20 April, says Jens [unless, presumably, he gets challenged too, says Merpel].



Plain packaging worked so well for cigarettes
that they decided to make it compulsory for lawyers too

 The increasingly prolific and indeed enthusiastic Enrico Bonadio (City Law School, London) has just told the IPKat of a new piece which he has co-authored with Alberto Alemanno) entitled “Do You Mind My Smoking? Plain Packaging of Cigarettes Under the TRIPS Agreement”, published in the current issue of the John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law -- and you can read it here on SSRN. This article, after introducing the reader to the genesis and rationale of plain packaging within the broader context of the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, offers a detailed analysis of the compatibility of this new packaging measure with the international system for trade mark protection as enshrined in the TRIPS. Enrico will be presenting the contents of this article as a paper at this year's John Marshall Law School IP conference on 15 April (details here).  Says Merpel, presumably the audience will be listening with wrapped attention ...

As vigilant as ever, the IPKat's Irish friend David Brophy has spotted that, among the items of "urgent" legislation listed today in the Irish Times as going to be published by the Irish Government no later than 21 July of this year is a Patents (Amendment) Bill to ratify the London Agreement on the reduction of translation costs for European patents.  That's nice, say the Kats in unison.