Thursday Thingies

OHIM has announced the opening of the entry period for DesignEuropa Awards 2016. All designs entered must be valid Registered Community Designs (RCD).  The award is in partnership with the Italian IP office, UIBM and is awarded in three categories: industry, small & emerging company, and lifetime achievement. The application window closes July 15th.  Fun fact: The Italian word for patent, brevetto, comes from the latin brevis, meaning short.

AIPPI Spanish Group has announced the program for their next sessions. Me gusta el programa.  The event, to be held on the 18th and 19th of February in Madrid, covers all things IP. Registration here. Fun fact: round table in Spanish is mesa redonda, and both the English and Spanish terms are likely translations of the French table ronde. 

The USPTO has published a white paper on Remixes, First Sale, and Statutory Damages (summary version here.)  In it, their Internet Policy Task Force recommends no legislative action on remixes and first sale doctrine, but lots of 'monitoring,' 'guidelines' and 'best practices.' It recommends action on statutory damages to "provide both more guidance and greater flexibility to courts in awarding statutory damages ... changes to remove a bar to eligibility for the Act’s “innocent infringer” provision, and to lessen the risk of excessive statutory damages in the context of non-willful secondary liability for online service providers." It also suggests the establishment of a small claims tribunal for infringement cases against individuals. Covered here on 1709 blog.

Taylor Wessing is soliciting responses for their annual Global IP Index Survey.  The survey closes Friday and can be completed in three languages: English, French and German.  Readers are encouraged to respond -- data in IP is scarce! Fun fact: The word in German for survey is umfrage and I can't find anything else to say on that matter.

The UK government published its response to the planned ascension to the Hague Agreement, two weeks ago, as covered in this Taylor Wessing blog post. Fun fact: The 'the' in The Hague likely comes from an old tradition of calling a place by its medieval description, rather than a name.  According to Slate, The Hague, or Den Haag comes from, "from Des Graven Hage, which means "the counts' hedge" and refers to the fact that Dutch noblemen once used the land for hunting." The IPKat approves.