Wednesday Whimsies

Have you checked the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page recently? A few more events have been added for your delight and your delectation. See you there?

Bobby Mukherjee (left) takes over from James
Hayles.  The IPKat thinks there's scope for
a witty caption. Any ideas, readers?

The IPKat offers a congratulatory paw to Dr Bobby Mukherjee, who has been elected as the new President of the UK's IP Federation. Bobby, a qualified UK and European patent attorney with over 16 years’ experience of IP work gained in private practice and at BAE Systems, is currently the company's Chief Counsel – IP & Technology Law, BAE Systems. Bobby's leisure activities include  playing the bongos, from which this Kat infers that he must be fairly skilled at the subtle art of driving other people mad while remaining perfectly calm himself.  Good luck, Bobby -- with these unitary patent systems and unified patent courts flying around, you'll need it!

An apple for the teacher? Now
most pupils have their own
Apples ...

Around the weblogs.  Fair use has again been preoccupying the 1709 Blog's copyright team.  The second in the series of Fleck's Five, this being Lorraine Fleck's pentalogy on the five major Supreme Court of Canada rulings, is now available here, this covering the making of photocopies for primary and secondary school instruction. Meanwhile another guest blogger, Philippa Malas, reviews the very uncomfortable US litigation in Wiley over the making of copies of documents for the purposes of the US Patent and Trademark Office's patent examinations, here. Over on the MARQUES Class 46 weblog, Jean-François Vanden Eynde (eBrand Services, Luxembourg) makes some fascinating points about the utility or otherwise of the Public Comment phase into which the first batch of ICANN generic top-level domains has recently entered.

It's worked this year
for 50 people ...

From none other than the highly-influential James Nurton, Managing Editor of Managing Intellectual Property magazine, comes news of that journal's 2012 version of the annual list of the 50 most influential people in IP is available online for lesser mortals (and kats) to peruse. James adds:

"This is now the 10th year we’ve done this exercise, so that’s 500 people/animals etc ranked over that time. Also as you will see this year we’ve ranked the top 10 in order – I think these 10 would make for a lively IP-themed dinner party ..."

This Kat has taken a peep at the list and knows which two of the Top Ten he'd like to sit between!