Sunday Surprises

Here are a few events and opportunities not to miss out on!

A two-in-one event in Milan! On 23 January 2018, by joint effort of the Università di Milano and the Italian Competition Authority, there will be an IP & antitrust event comprising a seminar on “Abuses in patent filing and regulatory procedure in the pharmaceutical sector” and a book presentation of the work, edited by Giovanni Pitruzzella and Gabriella Muscolo of the Italian Competition Authority, titled “Competition and Intellectual Property Law in the Pharmaceutical Sector. An International Perspective”. Speakers will include judges, lawyers, professors, Authority officials and industry representatives. Further information and registration here.

Abuses in patent filing make for an angry Kat

On 16 and 17 April 2018, the University of Exeter will host the conference “Intellectual property in transitions: (Re)-imagining intellectual property”. The conference is aimed at discussing how the dramatic multi-faceted changes of our times have or will have an impact on IP law. The conference committee has opened the call for contribution for paper and panel submissions (see the call here) and a prize of £200 will be awarded to the Best Presentation given by a Postgraduate Researcher. More information on the event here.

Yann Meniere and Pia Björk, respectively the Chief Economist and the Programme Manager at the EPO, will talk, on 26 January 2018, about "IP Management and IP Strategy in Small and Medium Sized Companies – Perspectives from the EPO" on a free webinar. The talk will revolve around some case studies undertaken by the EPO, on patent leveraging with an eye to support the development of SMEs. More information on the case studies here and link to the webinar registration form here.

For those out there in search of the doctoral challenge, a very interesting proposal comes from the ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles). The Belgian University offers a full-time research grant for a 3-year period to write a thesis on “Interactions between Intellectual Property Law (IP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)”. Deadline for applications is 16 April 2018. For more information on the various  requirements and specifics, see the call here.

To end on a jolly note, a few week ago, GuestKat Mathilde published the interesting post 

Erasing Kevin Spacey: performers' rights to the rescue?. Tweet after Tweet, the post was noticed and Mathilde was asked to rewrite the post for the Independent, which you will find here.