ActionAid UK has demonstrated that even the most serious of charities can have a sense of humour. The IPKat's friend Rebecca Dimaridis has pointed out that it has applied to patent a pre-salted potato chip as a means of demonstrating how absurd the patent rules are and how big business abuses them. Nice idea, but the Kat believes ActionAid will soon discover how wise those absurd rules are when its application is rightly refused for lack of novelty and want of an inventive step. Merpel says, has anyone seen the application? I'd love to take a look at the claims.Around the blogs. 19 months after its launch as a niche blog for the interface of IP rights and monetary issues, IP Finance has now notched up its 600th email subscriber. Don't forget, the blog has organised a ground-breaking seminar on UNCITRAL's controversial proposals for dealing with security interests in IP rights: this seminar, which already has an enrolment of over 60 people, is free and carries 2.45 CPD points (details here). European trade mark blog Class 46 has now migrated to its new home on the MARQUES website, but a lot of readers are emailing Jeremy to ask where it is ... Baby blog Class 99, on design law in Europe and occasionally beyond, is now up to its 50th subscriber. A new blog for those poor souls suffering from patentexamitis is EQE Tools, established by J. Terpsma. For those who enjoy the suffering of others as well as their own, this blog offers dramatic openings to posts that go like this: "Question 8 of D1 2009 was one of few questions where I lost about half of the marks available ...".
If you want to ensure that the IPKat reads everything you write, why not apply for this position as Speech Writer for the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization? The deadline for applications is 14 October. Ability to write in a gentle Australian accent is not mandatory ...