First things first, the previous month was a rather crazy one for us at BananaIP. In a span of 20 days we featured 84 posts, all of which were extremely well received. On this note, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all our readers for making the Blogathon a raging success. We also thank the readers for their continued support which encourages us to continuously strive towards excellence.
The primary objective of BananaIP has been to bring the IP knowledge from India to the world. At BananaIP, we believe in endeavoring and doing our best to collect not just important news but also deliver it in a speedy and timely manner. This December is dedicated to honoring and appreciating the other blogs from across the world who have dedicated themselves to the growth of Intellectual Property. For every day of the week, we will bring to our readers some of the Best IP blogs across the world.
We all know our superheroes quite well, whether it happens to be Superman, Batman or Spiderman, anyone can recognize these legendary men. All of them display extraordinary talents, some form of supernatural phenomena, or superhuman powers and are dedicated to a moral goal or protecting the public.
The superhero we bring to you in this post also displays the same qualities and is a very well recognized favorite in the realms of Intellectual Property. This superhero is unmistakable; he is a cat by birth and an IP aficionado by choice. He is known by the name ‘IPKat’ and has been delivering news from the IP World since 2003.
The IPKat is a weblog dedicated to covering copyright, patent, trade mark, information technology and privacy/confidentiality issues from the UK and European perspective. The weblog was launched in 2003 by Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon as a teaching aid for Intellectual Property Law students in London. Today, the IPKat’s weblog has become a popular source of information, material, commentary and amusement for IP owners, practitioners, judges, students,administrators and enthusiasts.
IPKat is managed by a dedicated team comprising of David Brophy, Merpel, Eleonora Rosati, Nicola Searle, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof. Founder editor Jeremy retired and stepped down as editor this November and has passed the reins to three new editors: Eleonora Rosati, Stefano Barazza and Marius Schneider.
The IPKat family includes two other characters Merpel, the female Kat and Amerikat, the American cousin of IPKat. According to the IPKat family, “While the IPKat is a fairly simple soul, who (unless he is having one of his occasional rants) is generally quite pleased with the world and everything in it, Merpel has a much more sly and cynical side to her; she’s also prone to make the occasionally provocative or mischievous pronouncement. She is empowered to post her own blogs but is generally far too busy enjoying life to bother doing so; one of her favourite occupations is to sit at the IPKat’s shoulder while he is blogging, pointing out spelling errors and telling him where he’s just plain wrong.”
The IPKat is a great resource for IP news, analysis and commentary. For 12 years, the IPKat has made constant efforts in ensuring quality IP articles and quality IP news. It is therefore only a very SiNApSE thing to congratulate and appreciate all those who constantly endeavor to spread the knowledge of IP.
My personal opinion as a reader of the IPKat is that, while the blog indisputably lays more emphasis on the quality of the articles, it would certainly be nice to read a blog that is more visually appealing and offers a better reading experience. Perhaps the first approach could be to consider moving the blog from its current platform to a new platform which offers an interactive reading experience to the reader and is more aesthetically appealing. In its present avatar, searching a particular article feels like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Nevertheless, The IPKat has enjoyed tremendous popularity among the different kinds of IP professionals and students for 12 years now, a feat that’s not very easy to accomplish. Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Leading IP Attorney, Best Selling Author and Founder of BananaIP said – “In my opinion, IPKat is the best IP blog in the world today. It is at the forefront of resources for IP professionals across the globe. I would like to congratulate Jeremy for all the good work. We will miss him on IPKat.”
To summarize this post, we would like to congratulate and appreciate the efforts of the “Kats” in ensuring the spread of IP knowledge through their dedicated efforts and most importantly by introducing the world to a superhero who knows perfectly what he is talking about.
Authored by Gaurav Mishra
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