Now, Why Didn’t I Think of That?

Howard Smith’s 1977 documentary entitled Gizmo, about whacky inventions and bizarre feats of human strenght etc., is now online at Google video.

It features fun inventions like the an ornithopter, an automatic moisture detector for baby diapers, a neck collar to keep secretaries from dozing off while typing, rollerskating waitresses to speed up food delivery, a […]

Further to my posting on Monday, about how the Federal Court ruled that Canadian Olympic Committee had wrongly tried to appropriate the sayings “See You In Vancouver”, “See You In Torino” and “See You In Beijing” as official marks, the decision has now been posted on the Federal Court’s website.

The style of cause is: See […]

Tomorrow, April 26th, will be World Intellectual Property (IP) Day.

Declared in 2001 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), this is World IP Day’s seventh anniversary. This year’s theme is Encouraging Creativity.

I think that Jeremy Phillips, from the blawg IPKat, was rather creative in his World IP Day posting “Cloning breakthrough announced for World […]

The Globe and Mail reports that Google is now the world’s most valuable brand.

The Google brand is estimated to be worth $66.4-billion (U.S.), according to a study by global market researcher company Millward Brown Optimor. Google ranks ahead of famous brands such as General Electric (No. 2), Microsoft (No. 3) and Coca-Cola (No. […]

The Vancouver Sun reports that last week the Federal Court smacked down the Canadian Olympic Committee, saying the Committee had wrongly tried to appropriate the sayings “See You In Vancouver”, “See You In Torino” and “See You In Beijing” as official marks.

For some background on this, see my posting last year where I […]

CIPO’s News Update reports that David Tobin, our Commissioner of Patents, Registrar of Trade-marks and Chief Executive Officer of CIPO, will be stepping down from these positions on April 27, 2007.

The Commissioner of Patents is responsible for granting Canadian patents and for ensuring that information is made available to promote the exploitation of […]

CIPO’s News Update today notes that as part of CIPO’s commitment to service excellence and continuous improvement, the organization has implemented new toll-free general enquiries lines.

The new numbers are:
General Enquiries - 1-866-997-1936
TTY (for the hearing impaired) - 1-866-442-2476

No more long distance charges or that $3 flat rate option (which I never really did bother […]

This week’s Trade-marks Journal (link to pdf) had a few amusing trade-mark applications advertised:

DRUNKEN COCKATOO - 1,302,124, by Drunken Cockatoo Gmbh in relation to a variety of cosmetic wares and services.

FOOT PUSSY - 1,309,715, by 1218247 Ontario Ltd., in relation to brushes for footwear or, as the website explains, a […]

After a long hiatus (wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost three months since my last post), I’ve been prompted back into the blogosphere by a nice email from Eugene Derényi, at Stikeman Elliott LLP in Ottawa, who informed me that the domain name patents.com is for sale. Currently the bid is already at […]