This and That

This has to be a very quick post as I am off to Luton tonight in time to catch the 07:00 flight to Geneva tonight. Can you believe that the return fare only costs £76.98 including airport taxes? It usually costs more than that to get to London in time for the 10:30 applications court - by standard class rail.

The reason I shall be in Geneva is to attend the annual WIPO domain name panellists meeting. The programme is very promising - talks by Christian Wichard and Ignacio de Castro on developments in ADR for IP, updates on the UDRP, a discussion of the new .eu TLD including a presentation by Tony Willoughby and much more.

While there I shall also pop into the Quaker United Nations Office. I mention this because they have published some work on intellectual property. One of the topics upon that they have discussed is Frederick Abbott's paper on Compulsory Licensing for Public Health Needs. This topic used to be regarded as a development issue but I think the rest of the world will take an interest in it in view of the announcement in yesterday's Patent Baristas of Cipla's proposal to make generic competitor to Tamiflu coinciding with commotion over infected birds in Eastern Europe.

While commending US blogs I have to mention a paper reported by Dennis Crouch on the Resolution of Patent Disputes in the USA. This country is probably too small a base but I should like to known the equivalent figures for here.

As I don't intend to lug a laptop onto an aeroplane and have not yet invested in a Blackberry this will be my last post for the weekend. Be back on Tuesday. Have a good weekend all.

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