Your weekly update on the news and events upcoming in IP is here! Highlights this week include news of inclusivity in London, a reminder of the change in fees
at the UK IPO and a new data set to browse from the USPTO.
UK – London
Celebrate the Chinese New Year in style with IP & Me’s inaugural event on 26 February 2018, hosted by Baker McKenzie (near St Paul’s). IP & Me is an IP inclusive group, focusing on ethnic minorities in IP. Everyone is welcome at this free networking event. For further details and registration, see here.
For even more inclusivity, there is also an upcoming IP inclusive workshop on 1 February 2018. The event, hosted by Kilburn & Strode LLP, will focus on the topical issue of Managing banter in the work place. Speakers include a member of the UK IPO’s HR team, Dominic Houlihan. Registration is free and all-inclusive. This Kat can strongly recommend IP inclusive events as great networking opportunities, especially for those at an early stage in their career. For further information on IP inclusive, as well as to sign up to the IP inclusive mailing list, see here.
Attentive IPKat
readers will recall from our last events post that Kat Neil Wilkof
will be giving a lecture at Kings College London (KCL) on 23
January 2018, on the topic of
Changing commercial circumstances, IP and revenge of the common
law. For further details, see here.
Kat Neil will also
be giving a lecture at University College London (UCL) on 25
January 2018, on the topic of Branding and co-branding: How
much do they really contribute to innovation? More information
and registration can be found here.
A chance to see a Kat in the fur!
 |
| This Kat is big on inclusivity |
There
will also
be
a research seminar at The
City Law School on
7th February 2018,
6pm,
delivered by professor Tuomas Mylly from
the University
of Turku on Fundamental
Rights and Copyright Law in the EU.
Further
information and free registration can be found here.
Finally,
the Charted
Institute of Trademark Attorneys
(CITMA) program of events for the year can be found here.
Of
note, are the CITMA Intensive Training Seminar on IP contracts on
21 March,
the Spring Conference and Gala Dinner on 21-23 March,
a Designs & Copyright Seminar on 19 April and
the CITMA Christmas Lunch on 14 December.
Netherlands, TILT
- Call for papers
The Tilbury Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT) PhD
Colloquium on Regulating new technologies in uncertain times will
take place at Tilburg University on 14 June
2018.
To find further information on the topics that will be covered at the
colloquium and to submit an abstract see here.
The deadline for abstract submissions is 28
February 2018.
Poland - WIPO roving seminars
The
WIPO roving seminar series continues in Poland this month, in Cracow
on January
23,
Gliwice on January
24 and Wroclaw on January
25.
The seminars and workshops will be in English and Polish, with Polish
translation for the English presentations. For further information
and free registration see
here.
UK IPO – change
in fees
The
UK IPO’s
new
patent fee schedule will come into force on 6 April
of this year. The UK government’s guidance on the fee changes can
be found here.
The
application, search and examination fee are all set to increase.
Renewal
fees increase from the year 12 renewal fee onward. According
to the UK IPO, reasons for the increase in fees include to
“[m]aintain a sustainable income on reasonable assumptions to
finance the IPO’s future activities”.
USPTO – new data set on office actions
The
USPTO has released a new data set providing detailed information on
the
office
actions (non-final
rejections
and final
rejections)
that
it issues.
According to the USPTO Chief Data Strategist Thomas Beach, these data
have been brought to the public by “leveraging emerging
technologies such as big data and machine learning”. The
data set itself can be downloaded from the USPTO’s open data
platform here.
A
paper published by the USPTO analyzing the data can be read here.
See Tables 1 and 2 of the paper for facts on the distribution of
reasons for rejection in final and non-final office
actions. This Kat's initial browse of the data reveals such interesting facts as 12.4% of the USPTO's §101
subject eligibility rejections being based
on the Alice decision (although the significance of this, without merging the data with those on the type of subject matter in examined claims, is unclear...). The
USPTO has also updated its patent
examination data set to
include the prosecution information for the
most recent applications, as
sourced
from public
pair.