Friday fantasies

Don't forget to check out the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page, here. Several fresh items have been added this week, just for some of you ...

Feeling a bit Pommery?

... and talking of which, if you happen to be in the lovely old city of Edinburgh on Tuesday, 12 August, be sure to venture down to The Pommery Champagne Café Bar, which you'll find in the Signet Library.  Between the thoroughly civilised hours for sipping Champagne, ie 3.00 pm – 5.00 pm, fellow Kat Eleonora Rosati will be in conversation with illustrious Scottish IP litigator and Katfriend Gill Grassie (partner, Brodies LLP).   This event has been created in order to rally that fierce and independent clan of Scottish IP lawyers to hear about the latest international copyright developments. 1.5 Law Society of Scotland CPD hours are on offer, and the modest registration fee includes at least one glass of bubbly. Further details and registration here.


Tattoo, Kats too. The IPKat received, at very short notice, an urgent request for legal input from a journalist, Ross McGuinness, who was compiling an article for popular give-away morning newspaper Metro.  Ross was working on a piece, "Ink twice: Do celebrities and footballers own their tattoos? Does anyone?" While this Kat was unable to drop his deadline-directed work, he was thrilled that his feline friend Eleonora Rosati, plus former guest Kats Miri Frankel, Darren Meale and Robert Cumming, not to mention emeritus Kat Jo Gibson, were able to rally round Ross and be of some assistance.  Ross's article is here.  For the record, it seems -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- that IP lawyers see bigger issues relating to copyright in tattoos than do tattoo artists and their clients ...

The Old Nick. At least a few Kats, fellow IP bloggers and enthusiasts will be meeting up for a pleasurable pint of Badger at The Old Nick (Holborn, Central London, here) this coming Wednesday, 16 July. Previous occasional meetings in this venerable venue have resulted in some jolly good discussions of topics of contemporary intellectual property law and practice, as well as some serious topics.  IPKat blogmeister Jeremy will be there between 5 pm and 7 pm, and there will be others ...  Please feel free to join us if you're around. No need to RSVP. We're usually round the back if it's free. If not, we're pretty easy to find.

With a possible cheese war on the way,
Marmaduke is taking no chances ...

Around the weblogs. Ben Challis has been busy again on the 1709 Blog, with his latest CopyKat post. Over on Class 46, fellow Kat Birgit spots that the UK is not about to reintroduce fast-track examination of trade mark applications for the unsurprising reason that there wasn't any demand for them in the first place, while Denise Verdoold sniffs the subtle scent of a cheese war maturing between Europe and the United States of America, the battleground being whether geographical cheese names are protectable assets or generic terms. While on the subject of protection of place-related food names, here's Nicola Coppola's current intelligence note for the jiplp blog on the 'Salame Felino' case. PatLit picks up on the SDL litigation and the counterfactual reconstruction of a non-existent past in order to assess real damages for making wrongful threats to sue a trading business for patent infringement. Finally, crossing to the US of A, one of this Kat's heroes, Marty Schwimmer, Anti-scam Warrior and Redskins Worrier, updates us -- with a little help from Rebecca Tushnet's 43(B)log -- on his efforts to pin down Patent & Trademark Agency LLC for false advertising and creating the erroneous impression that people have to pay it money ...

Misplaced anger: the
problem's the software ...

Back on 14 January the IPKat hosted a guest post by Barbara Cookson, "Problems with the OHIM database: prioritising the solutions", here. At the time we received some comments as well as a fair bit of email on the subject, and the position regarding the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market's not-so-new website does seem to have improved considerably, thanks to some very helpful input from users of the Community trade mark system as well as a willingness to listen and react on the part of OHIM. All is not yet perfect, however, and an anonymous correspondent posted the following paragraph to the 14 January article. Since few people are likely to see it there now, this Kat has taken the opportunity to paste it here:

"We sent in February some documents to OHIM through e-communication but it seems that because of their new website the documents did not reach the Office. Now OHIM does not accept that there was a problem with their new website and states that we did not send the documents. Is anyone having the same problem? This is totally wrong, we have proof that the documents were sent, but still OHIM does not accept it". 

Readers, can you help? OHIM, can you help? Let's hear from you!

Stairway to Heaven? No, Highway to Registration.  There's a Patent Prosecution Highway User Seminar coming up soon, on Tuesday, 22 July from 9:30 to 16:30, thanks to the German Patent and Trade Mark Office Munich. Details are available here. Given the number of hours that the seminar is to last, says Merpel, you can be sure that it will cover the subject thoroughly.