Friday fantasies

The beginning of December sees two big patent events on which this Kat is keeping his eye. Both, coincidentally, are on 4 and 5 December, and they are not a long way away from one another either -- both taking place in Central London.  They are

* "International Patent Litigation", this being IBC's 6th annual edition of this hardy perennial. You can catch a glimpse of this excellent programme by clicking here. There's a great international cast of speakers, including several notable Katfriends. To claim your 15% registration discount as a reader of this blog, don't forget to quote VIP KatCode FKW82525IPKB. To register, click here.

* "Preparing for the Unitary Patent Package", this being organised by ERA in conjunction with this Kat's friends and colleagues at Queen Mary, University of London. For programme details and registration, click here.

If you can't attend both -- which is quite likely -- do at least try to attend one of them.  Merpel thinks it would be good if you could "mix and match" by getting a special registration package that let you flit effortlessly from one to the other, and back again.  Maybe one day ...

Around the weblogs. First, here's news of a new blog on the block. The IPKat welcomes Fordham Research and Conference Fellow Luis Velez to the blogosphere.  His weblog, The IP Trend, is set to provide some serious and coherent analyses of our favourite topics, so we wish him the very best of luck.  As for old blogs, the 1709 Blog carries, in addition to Ben Challis's latest CopyKat round-up, some observations from John Enser on what the UK's Culture Minister has to say about copyright and search engines.  IP Finance hosts a piece from Aritra Chatterjee on the role of insurance in intangible asset financing and, on Afro-IP, Aurelia J. Schultz writes up the NCerS copyright registration system in Nigeria.

More Southampton alumni. To say that they are crawling out of the woodwork would be fair neither to them nor to the woodwork, but ever since this blog broke the news that fellow Kat Eleonora had taken up a teaching post at the University of Southampton, we've been hearing about various good souls who now earn a blameless living as IP specialists, having once studied in that bastion of scholarship.  Latest to join the list are the fieldfisher trio of David Knight, James Martin and Tommy McKenna.  Thanks for letting us know!