Tuesday tiddleywinks

tytoc collie's creative and imaginative friends at Anti Copying in Design (ACID) are full of surprises.  One such surprise -- designed to brighten up today's World Intellectual Property Day celebrations -- is the launch of IP Tracker, which the organisation describes as "a simple, cost effective digital method of tracking delivery of IP led and confidential information".  ACID explains further:

"It is a natural electronic addition to the already successful ACID Design Data Bank which holds over 350,000 copies of unregistered designs. All too often, design ideas and new product designs are stolen at the vulnerable stage of sending them to third parties. The IP Tracker, reinforced by the powerful ACID brand, will be an additional tool of self help ensuring a further layer of IP awareness. ing receipted evidence of sending reverses the burden of proof and makes it easier to take action.”

The Copyright Clearance Center has been busy again. Its latest production number is a fresh “Beyond the Book” podcast in which CCC’s Chris Kenneally interviews Christoph Brem (Attributor), Devereux Chatillon and Brian O’Leary (Megellan Media Partners) about protecting copyright in the digital age at the Publishing Business Conference & Expo. Brem discusses the ecosystem of copyright infringers and how to track and understand how the pirated information is being used. O’Leary finds that piracy can be a great marketing mechanism, with books that were pirated showing greater sales. Chatillon then ties in aspects of both Brem and O’Leary’s conversation in relation to the production of Harry Potter’s 7th book. The discussion ends with discussing how the lack of knowledge and understanding of the changes made in copyright have made it harder to solve problems. Podcast here; transcript here. 

Turkish IP Delight.  The Boğaziçi University, in cooperation with the Turkish Patent Institute,  recently held an international conference on Managing Intellectual Property in Universities.  From this link to the conference's website it should be possible to access the presentations of the panelists.  Thank you, Mehmet Artemel, for providing this information.

Following his recent pensées ("Two Riffs on Sublicensing", here), our transaction-oriented Kat Neil thanks readers for all their interest in his work-in-progress PowerPoint on sublicensing. He adds:

"In truth, these materials have laid fallow for the last year or so. All of your comments are most welcome with the hope that we can collectively improve the awareness among our colleagues of this neglected topic".