Friday fantasies

Friday has come around again so please, please check the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page for all the exciting things you can do once the kids are back at school, the dog has been collected from the holiday kennels and the realisation that Christmas is on its way has truly kicked in.

Nice. The IPKat has been pondering the following extract from a rather jolly document published by his friends at the World Intellectual Property Organization ("Special Union for the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (Nice Union) Committee of Experts, Twenty-First Session, Geneva, November 22 to 26, 2010",  dated 11 January 2011).  The extract reads thus:

"The Committee agreed that amendments and other changes to the ninth edition of the Nice Classification should enter into force on January 1, 2012 [that's 121 days from now], which meant that, in accordance with Article 4(1) of the Nice Agreement, the notification of the decisions of the Committee should be sent by the International Bureau (IB) on July 1, 2011 [which, like so many fleeting pleasures, has been and gone ...], at the latest."

Now, no-one ever told the IPKat what happened next.  Has the 10th edition been prepared and notified to the International Bureau in all its glory, or has something happened to it? Can anyone advise this confused kitty?


The piece by Ben Collingwood on ownership of Twitter accounts and followers as between employers and ex-employees, which the IPKat recently hosted here, has attracted quite a bit of interest from readers. The Kat also thanks Gerry Gavigan for drawing his attention to the first blog post by Laura Kuenssberg for her new employer, here. It contains the following:

".. my departure from the BBC to become business editor at ITV News led to a sometimes frenzied conversation online, in diary columns, and even on the front page of one newspaper over the question of who “owned” the 60,000 or so people who had followed me on Twitter as @BBCLauraK. 

Laura also speaks

For me, such talk of the BBC “losing” thousands of digital consumers as I “took” them with me as I moved to become @ITVLauraK was based on a misunderstanding of this new medium. Spend any time on Twitter and it is obvious that it is hardly a place where wallflowers linger, waiting silently and patiently for an invitation to participate in the debate. I didn’t choose the boisterous, diverse, direct and often delightful 67,000 who followed my account. They chose to follow me. And their reasons for doing so were many and varied.  So while the agreement with the BBC that I could transfer my Twitter name was entirely amicable, and I wish my successor, @BBCNormanS, well, I was, and still am, well aware that the followers of my account could, with just one click, switch off from the 140-character missives I write throughout the day. Indeed, with the tendency for full and frank disclosure that Twitter encourages, a small handful of followers did in fact get in touch to tell me they were checking out. Happily, though, the vast majority have stayed put...."

While the agreement between Laura and the BBC was obviously something between just the two of them and cannot be said in any meaningful sense to be a precedent, the Kat applauds the refreshingly realistic and commonsense approach reflected here.  But, Merpel warns, the ownership of copyright in the tweets remains a separate issue.

In the olden days, you
had to ask for money.
Now they just throw
it at you ...

Following Merpel's little rant earlier today about the arithmetic, and indeed more than the arithmetic, underpinning ICANN's gTLD regime, as well as Adam Smith's additional comments, the IPKat has learned that Australian broadcaster, journalist and organ donor ambassador Mark Colvin from the ABC's PM programme is hoping to do a story on ICANN and the gTLDs next week. Mark's interest in organ donations is not unique. Some brand owners will take heart at the fact that the new scheme will get some vigorous no-nonsense examination from this quarter, while others have already resigned themselves to having to pay an arm and a leg to buy the coveted word that follows the dot.  So why not keep an eye out for further developments? By the way, you can follow Mark on Twitter at @colvinius.

Late change.  The IPKat's disappointment that his friend Alice Gould (Wedlake Bell) has been lost to next week's Hardwicke sell-out seminar on Initial Interest Confusion on account of a pressing court commitment (an occupational hazard among litigation lawyers, alas!) has been tempered by his relief that an excellent replacement has been found in the person of Simon Bennett (Fox Williams). This seminar should be a fascinating and educative event, with not a little controversy: not everyone on the planet believes that initial interest confusion (i) is a good and useful legal doctrine or (ii) can already be found within European Union and UK case law.  The IPKat hopes to report on this seminar, all being well.  Meanwhile, you can get a little background reading on the subject here.

With what he describes as the "least surprising news of the year", Chris Torrero informs the IPKat that both of the warring factions in the Myriad BRCA breast cancer gene patent furore are separately appealing against the controversial recent ruling (which you can read in full here).