Friday fantasies

Fridays in August are usually quiet, peaceful occasions. Inject a little excitement into your life by checking out the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page here.

Talking of forthcoming events, there's an intriguing one coming up to the north of Hadrian's Wall where a Law Society of Scotland seminar, "IP and the Law in a Digital Age", takes place at the Festival of Politics [the what! exclaims Merpel] next Friday, 26 August, in committee room 1 of what some might claim to be the ugliest building in Europe, the Scottish Parliament. If you want to be there (and you can't see the outside of the building when you're inside it), it's best to contact Emily Young on 0131 476 8204 or email her at emilyyoung@lawscot.org.uk and tell her the IPKat sent you.

Still talking of forthcoming events, the IPKat informs his readers that there's a change in the speakers' line-up for the Handbags at Dawn: IP and Fashion conference on 22 September. Stephanie Hutchinson (Arnold & Porter) will be speaking on import/export issues involving fashion brands. Although she continues to deny that she is Superwoman (the "S" on the illustration to the left stands for "Stephanie"), she has a very impressive profile and even knows how to write articles. Her details aren't on the conference web page yet, but you can read a little about her here.

If you have been following the Google Book Settlement (GBS) saga, it's best to keep a safe distance since there are grounds upon which one might infer that the GBS is about to be interred, whether there's still theoretically some life in it or not.  C.E. Petit's Scrivener's Error seems ready to officiate over the last rites, judging by his "GBS Update: Second Circuit Decision in Muchnick May Kill Class Settlement Chances", here.  And if you have an urgent need to visit the Laboratorium, you'll find plenty of reading matter in James Grimmelman's obituary for it, "Google Books Settlement, 2008-2011", here.

Around the weblogs.  In "NCC has its knuckles rapped over raids, seizures against collecting society", Nigerian IP lawyer and business consultant Ayo Solarin reviews the currently confused situation in Nigeria, where there seems to be more litigation between bodies that are concerned with copyright enforcement than there is against real infringers: read Ayo's piece on Afro-IP here.  If red soles are more to your taste, the recent ruling in Louboutin v Yves St Laurent is given a make-over by US fashion law expert Charles Colman in his Styleite blog here.


Tail end.  Merpel moaned on Wednesday about the neglect of cat genomes. It took a sleuth like Chris Torrero to track down Feline Genome Resources here.