Tripping over 100,000 views

IP Draughts loves data.  This website of London data, updated every 10 minutes, is wonderful, and IP Draughts has bookmarked it, although it is not immediately obvious what he will do with the information.  It is useful to know the height of the tide at Tower Bridge, but it is a few years since IP Draughts last canoed on the river in London.  He has a vivid recollection of that occasion, particularly of being overtaken under an arch of one of London’s bridges by the Merrie Thames, a tourist boat, while simultaneously coping with a fast-flowing tide, some large waves, and an inquisitive labrador standing up in the canoe.

Similarly, it is interesting to know how many Boris bikes are out on hire, and what the air quality is like in Bloomsbury, even if IP Draughts can’t think of an immediate, practical use for this information.

So, please indulge IP Draughts for reciting some data about this blog.  Our excuse is that we have recently received our 100,000th visit to the site.  If this site were a supermarket, we might have offered the 100,000th visitor the opportunity to fill a trolley with groceries, without charge.  But (to state the obvious) we’re not a supermarket, and we’re not that generous, and anyway we don’t know who the 100,000th visitor was.

According to WordPress’s records, we have received visits from people in approximately 200 countries (how many are there?).  We are currently running at between 200 and 250 visits on most weekdays.

There have been 268 postings, and 383 comments on the blog.  The posting on which most comments were received is When is a licence not a licence? When it’s a covenant not to sue.

The most popular pages on the blog since it was set up in 2011, other than the home page, have been:

Assignment and change of control: vital boilerplate clauses in IP agreements?		3,394
Postgraduate diploma in IP transactions – an update		2,813
Inappropriate use of indemnities		2,335
Shall or will in contracts?		2,218
10 words and phrases you should never use in IP contracts		1,982
Well stacked wedding cakes…		1,626
Top 10 howlers when preparing contracts for signature		1,494
Hold harmless revisited		1,465
Do you need a science degree to be a good IP lawyer?		1,185
Don’t sign a binding letter of intent!		1,148

Thank you to all our readers for your support.  Please let us know if there are topics on which you think we should post and which might help us to achieve 200,000 viewings.

New book on IP licensing

Today, IP Draughts received his complimentary copy of a recently-published book, Research Handbook on Intellectual Property Licensing (ed. Jacques de Werra, Edward Elgar Publishing), details of which can be found here.  IP Draughts is the proud author of chapter 6, titled International Patent Licensing.

Each chapter has been written by a different author.  Other authors are either academics or practitioners or both, and include Jane Ginsburg, Raymond Nimmer, Heinz Goddar, John Hull (IP Draughts’ fellow lecturer on the Commercialisation of IP course at UCL), and Neil Wilkof (an IPKat).

IP Draughts’ chapter describes some differences in national laws governing licensing, and proposes an international code, or set of default contract terms, for patent licensing, covering such issues as licence rights, warranties, cooperation, financial terms, termination, law and jurisdiction, assignment and change of control, and other boilerplate terms.