Monday miscellany

... must at least be identifiable

Reminder for all readers: from today, Monday 7 September, readers' comments will no longer be accepted if they are not submitted (i) in the name of their author or (ii) under a pseudonym. Sorry if this causes annoyance (which we hope it won't) or confusion (which we expect it will). However, the difficulties faced in trying to work out who has said what have prompted the Kats to spring into action and make this rule.  The Blogger 'string' solution suggested by some readers doesn't really seem to address the issue since readers who post comments often do so in relation to several different earlier posts or discussions at the same time, on topics that are interrelated.  Anyway, thanks for your cooperation!

Copyright course at UCL claims to be sensible -- but you can get certified for taking it. "In the light of the copyright activities at the Commission", writes Katfriend Amanda Harcourt, "we are running a flexible course for the copyright industries at UCL in January [Monday 18 to Friday 22, to be precise] to explore the information from Brussels and that we hope will be sensible. You will see that it is framed so that attendees can come to part of the course so that they can augment their knowledge.  Thursday and Friday is compulsory-- and there is the option of 3 days, 4 days or the whole week (with accompanying price adjustments)". The star attraction of the course, which leads to a Certificate in Legal Rights and Trade Practices in the Creative Industries (CILRATPICI?), is the participation of fellow Kat Eleonora and recent guest Kat Tom Ohta among the 37 faculty members. Further details are available here. 

Here's a sample graphic, taken from last week's
IAM Business Report on Billion-dollar Start-ups

Looking for graphics to support your blogpost?  People who write blogposts on IP analytics and statistics-related topics are often short of a decent chart or diagram to illustrate or ideally prove the points they are trying to make, and most bloggers lack the time, the ability or the inclination (or all three) to work out how to compose one.  If you are one of such people, here's some good news: IP analytics company Aistemos has kindly offered to provide charts and analytics in support of submissions to this weblog, to IP Finance and indeed to any other weblog that offers a serious treatment of IP analytics, statistics, big data and the like.  If you want to take up this offer, your first port of call is Marcus Malek (whom you can email at marcus.malek@aistemos.com).

Around the weblogs.  On the 1709 Blog former guest Kat Marie-Andrée writes up the welcome decision that a Californian city council was not allowed to assert copyright infringement against a citizen who used the video recordings of its council meetings in order to criticise its decisions and the positions taken by some of its members. The same blog carries more welcome news, from Ben Challis this time, that the saga of Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier and A Slight Trick of the Mind has finally settled -- though the terms of settlement have not been disclosed and this blogger suspects that they may have been driven by convenience and expediency rather than honour.  The jiplp weblog lists four more books for review, for those who are speedy enough to respond to the invitation. 

Recent publications of note. "New banknotes not on the money - iwi", by Laura Bootham on Radio New Zealand News, reports on what, to this Kat at any rate, looks like the first recorded instance of the attribution of items of traditional culture to the wrong Māori tribe. The IP lawyers have been called in (Katpat to Jonathan Barrett for the link).  Protection of traditional knowledge other than through intellectual property is the theme of long-time campaigner and former Indian patent examiner R. S. Praveen Raj, in "No Need Of IPRs For Protecting Traditional Knowledge", hosted by Intellectual Property Watch, here.