Wednesday whimsies

Around the weblogs. "Stock Market Reactions to Patent Litigation: Can You Help?" is a rallying call for information that student Nam Nguyen (TU Darmstadt, Germany) can use in a dissertation: further details are on IP Finance, here.  The Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice's jiplp blog is calling for a bit of involvement too -- this time in a short online survey on JIPLP's cooperation with leading German IP periodical GRUR Int. Even slow readers can do this one in about 90 seconds, so do have a go!  On the 1709 Blog, Rebecca Giblin reports on Australia's agenda for digital law reform. The same blog announces that Francis Davey's Copynorms survey is heading for the 1,000 respondent mark: please participate! It won't just make Francis's day, but will actually be of some value in assessing attitudes towards copyright [or what's left of it, Merpel thinks]. Finally, Pedro Malaquias gives a detailed account of a decision of an OHIM Board of Appeal to uphold the decision of the Opposition Division that an application to register a figurative mark containing the word PAROBOOK was not likely to cause confusion with an earlier registration of a figurative mark for FACEBOOK and that there was no dilution or tarnishing of the latter's reputation, since the marks' respective fields of commercial activity.

Fancy a challenge?  "Trademark Law and Its Challenges 2014" is the title of an event which is co-hosted on 13 March by the McCarthy Institute and Microsoft Corporation, which is co-sponsored this year by Oxford University.  The venue is the British Library, 96 Euston Road, London [warning: this place has a truly seductive bookshop ...].  Following a morning keynote by International Trademark Association CEO Etienne Sanz de Acedo on emerging trends in European trade mark law, four panels will discuss (i) potential secondary liability under trade mark law for search engines and social media companies in the United States and Europe, (ii) how trade mark law is (mis)used in the United States and Europe to provide substantive IP protection, (iii) gTLD issues and (iv) proposed changes to European trade mark law. More information can be found here, and there's also a direct link to the registration page. Bad news: all the free spaces for students have been taken. Good news: free streaming is provided, with log-in details being posted on the event's web page a day before it happens.  This Kat hopes it goes well; he has fond memories of the Institute's eponymous founder Tom McCarthy, with whom he once had a long and highly educational lunch when Tom came visiting in London.


Fancy some Fudg (sic)? No, it's not fudge and, if it's a trifle unpronounceable, that doesn't make it any the worse to argue about it. The story is that Hashmels Ltd. a registered South African company dealing in confectionery, has introduced a new ice-cream brand, Fudg. This product has distinctive red and purple colour shades of packaging. After a  successful launch, distribution commenced to all major retail outlets, along with advertisements on their website and they successfully applied for and registered the trade mark FUDG in Kenya.  Want to know what happens next? If so, you may be interested to discover that this is the prelude to an IP Moot Court for World Intellectual Property Day 2014 (26 April, that is), which is organised by Strathmore University's CIPIT unit, Nairobi, Kenya. If you're interested in participating in this event, supporting or sponsoring it -- or just want to know what happens to FUDG next -- just click the link here.  Further details can be obtained from Katfriend and fellow Afro-IP blogger Isaac Rutenberg at iruten@gmail.com.  Historical note: this is apparently the first IP Moot ever to be held in Kenya, and very possibly in the whole of East Africa so, if you want to be associated with it, you are actually helping to make a little bit of history.

Fancy some IP Governance by Private Collective Entities?  I’m responsible [says Katfriend and fellow academic Thomas Riis, University of Copenhagen: that Kats aren't responsible -- well, Merpel isn't!] for an international  one-day conference on “IP Governance by Private Collective Entities” at the University of Copenhagen on 7 March and thought that it could be of interest for the IP community.  This is what it's about:

"The fast pace of technological and commercial development in the knowledge society challenge intellectual property law due to the time lag and inflexibility of the traditional model of legal regulation which is based on statutory law. As a response new non-legislative regulatory models have emerged. It is common to many of these regulatory models that statutory law does not work as intended and private regulatory models redefine the legal position.

This conference deals with private collective entities managing intellectual property rights driven by the idea of providing easy access to IP protected creations; entities such as patent pools, patent clearance/clearing houses and copyright collecting societies. The conference is an offspring of the research project named User Generated Law which studies various forms of private regulatory models within the area of IP law".

The event is publicly funded and therefore free (including the legendary free lunch), but you still have to register for it or Merpel will eat your smörgåsbord and there won't be anything left for you).  Further details and registration can be obtained here.