Wednesday whimsies

Today's your last chance to vote in the Starbucks New Logo poll: if you're an email reader and don't often visit the site but would like to vote, just click here and you should find the poll at the top left hand corner of your screen.  The bone of contention is the virtue (or otherwise) of the global coffee giant's newly restyled logo, jettisoning the text and simplifying the image.  You've got a whole range of options (six, in fact), which enable you to express your blissful acceptance, acute dislike and a few things in between.   Voting closes later today.

It's now FIVE days since tytoc collie posted his first angry comment (here) on this scam website which has been perpetrated by the World Intellectual Property Database -- and, checking today, he sees that it's still there.  Come on WIPO, says the Kat!  You can't tell the world how important intellectual property protection is and then do nothing to protect your own -- particularly since innocent people are receiving invitations to pay real money for no apparent IP-related benefit.

Around the blogs.  PatLit's PCC Pages series, on the revamped Patents County Court for England and Wales, resumed yesterday with "PCC 11: Getting your tentacles in a twist".  Continuing the saga of Cautious v IPOff and the Case of the Robot Octopus, it awaits your pleasure here.  Instant congratulations to new kid on the block Art and Artifice, which was only launched yesterday and has already sailed past the 100 email subscriber mark.

IPKat's impression
of Jacques Lassier:
you can't find a piccie
online since every
search request for
Lassier is assumed to
be a request for
Loussier instead

What is the difference between Jacques Loussier and Jacques Lassier?  The first is a musician who almost certainly made more from pinching Bach's work than he recovered when Eminem allegedly pinched his.  The second is a beneficiary of those young folk who like to spend their days writing learned treatises if they're not actually reading them.

The Jacques Lassier Prize is a prize of €1,830 which is awarded for a written work or dissertation on a competition law subject -- fortunately this covers both antitrust law and unfair competition law, including IP-related matters. Entries must have been produced or, in the case of a dissertation, defended), within the past two years.  Who can compete? Entrants must be "young individuals (i.e. those who are under 35 on 31 March 2011) who are individual members of the International League of Competition Law (LIDC) or residents of a country where there is an affiliated national group (such as the Competition Law Association in the UK)". Full details of the Prize rules can be found on the CLA’s website here.

Cat bride, available here, but
not available for comment ...

Good news for those attending the IP and Royal Wedding conference (8 February, here) -- more interest has been drummed up by clothing retailers who seek to cash in on the "Kate Middleton brand" by using the blushing bride's name to sell copies of her popular outfits.  These entrepreneurial souls have already been warned they could be sued for tens of thousands of pounds.  In "Royal aides vow to protect 'brand Kate Middleton'", The Telegraph reports (thanks, Chris Torrero, for this link) that the rule that companies are not allowed to suggest that any member of the Royal Family has endorsed any of their products could now apply to Prince William's bride-to-be. In the usual journalistic muddle over anything to do with IP, the respected news source [founded in 1855 and regularly protected by IP rights ever since] states that

"Courtiers plan to warn businesses that using Miss Middleton's full name on products could put them in violation of copyright laws [no, no, no -- not even the Court of Justice of the European Union could come to such a conclusion], the Daily Mail reported.

Royal aides said Miss Middleton is not held to be a brand in her own right, but a legal expert said her name was now "controlled" by the Royal Family, adding: "She has a reputation to uphold [Don't we all?] and because of that she is, to all intents and purposes, akin to a brand or marque."

Miss Middleton could rightfully have complained about the unauthorised use of her name before getting engaged, but her protection is likely to be stronger now that she is to become part of the Royal Family.

Prince William and Miss Middleton will allow rules on the use of official pictures and coats of arms to be relaxed for souvenirs of their wedding, but the Royal Household will clamp down on any other attempts to trade off Miss Middleton's name.

An aide said it was "highly unlikely that we would have any objection if a company wanted to call the dress 'the Kate dress' ... it may, however, be a different scenario if it was called the 'Catherine/Kate Middleton dress". ...". [So long as it's not a Kate-suit, growls Merpel].