Thursday Thingies

In this week's Thursday Thingies, I lose part of my soul.

Elisha Dawkins, via
Wikimedia

Martin Shkreli, he of the increasing-price-of-pill-from-$13.50-to-$750 fame, has been arrested for fraud. The arrest has nothing to do with Daraprim and patents, but all to do with alleged misuse of stocks. According to the Bloomberg report, he has a reputation for "trashing biotechnology stocks in online chatrooms and shorting them, to enormous profit." A sarcastic kat-pat to the man who bought possbily the most expensive album ever made.

OHIM has had a busy week.  Their Orphan Works database is now available in all official languages (including Icelandic!) The OHIM Observatory, the OHIM body responsible for evidence, data, education and awareness, among other things, announced their work programme for the 2016. They also published a new report, which argues, "€1.4 billion [is] lost every year across the EU due to fake toys and games."

K-Pop, a.k.a. Korean popular music, is the subject of a recent CREATe paper. Keith Negus boldly argues that, "The success of K-pop in generating revenue was facilitated by a relatively brief period during which the Korean government and industry organisations introduced and strictly enforced copyright legislation... [and]  is premised upon a very specific approach to stardom and the idol system, producing South Korean or Asian ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ identities." U.S. immigration also put K-Pop in the news.

Trump your Cat
by Jill Carlson

For the truly soul destroying, Voldemort part of my post -- willingly typing, in a somewhat sympathetic tone, "Donald Trump." Yes, DT is in an IP dispute over the trade mark "Trump Your Competition" as the online marketing company, Trump Your Competition, seeks to revive their cancelled registration.  DT challenged this second attempt. Trump Your Competition is adamant DT needs to appear in person for to be questioned by their lawyers. Considering the company hasn't even filled out their website completely (Lorem ipsum), and that marketing is their business, it's hard not to see this as anything but a publicity ploy, or, as Trump's lawyer put it, "the case is beyond meritless."

Finally, for a charming take on what policy economists do, written by 15-year-old-intern Sebastian, check out the OECD Insight's blog. According to Sebastian, "one of the first things I learnt while interviewing economists at the OECD is that there is no one economist, they all come in different shapes and forms."