Monday miscellany ...

DON'T FORGET to check the Forthcoming Events side bar.  FREE events are in BLUE. The rest aren't.   Right now there are 38 events at your disposal.  Even if you can't go to all of them, do be sociable and sign up for some if you can!

By press release WCT Notification No. 73, the World Intellectual Property Organization informs the IPKat and his readers that the Republic of Tajikistan has now deposited its instrument of accession to the WIPO Copyright Treaty. The WCT will enter into force, with respect to Tajikistan, on 5 April 5 2009.


The IPKat's respected blogging colleague Howard ("Excess Copyright") Knopf has drawn his attention to the fact that tomorrow, 20 January 2009, is the final day for the receipt of comments on a possible Canada-EU free trade agreement. Howard's blog contains some helpful suggestions as to why anyone might wish to comment, as well as citing the late Gordon F. Henderson's bon mot that the best way to keep a secret in Ottawa can be to publish it in the Canada Gazette. There's not much time for well thought-out and carefully-worded responses, but just enough time for a decent knee-jerk reaction if you're that way inclined.


It's the weekly what- the-other-blogs-are-doing time. The SPC Blog, dedicated to supplementary protection certificates for patents and to all who love them, has picked up its 250th email subscriber and is now looking forward to a real-live seminar at which SPC-freaks can congregate in the same room for several hours, breathe the same air and share abstruse legal niceties that most non-SPC enthusiasts would have little time for. Meanwhile, the Datonomy data protection blog has gently glided past the 50 email subscriber mark and now sits pretty in the low 60s.  Finally, the Class 46 European trade mark blog team has been strengthened by the arrival of Carina Badger, who in the past has been a useful source of information for the IPKat himself. Good luck, Carina!