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By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

It seems like ages since the previous issue of CPA's quarterly IP Review was published, not least because the stately passage of time between its quarterly releases is packed with so many events, activities, publications and developments that its readers will inevitably have focused their attention elsewhere.

Right: the caption reads "Looking forward", but it's cunningly looking backward instead -- this is the cover of the previous edition since the current one wasn't online when this review was composed.

And it's not as if it is so long that anyone can keep it going for a full thirteen weeks before its successor appears. Alas, the pleasures of the IP Review are brief -- even at 50 pages -- and fleeting. But they are pleasures nonetheless. High quality paper, handsome illustrations, well-used space: these all conspire to lead the reader to anticipate reading about some Spice Girl's nuptials rather than, say, a deep analysis of the rules for the receipt of faxes out of office hours by the Patent Office of the People's Democratic Republic of Pedantia.

So what's in this issue? Lots of bright, little, newsy things -- the sort of IP you'd want to read if you were in the dentist's reception room and needed a series of short, snappy distractions. Mini-interviews, micro-reviews, nano-news all served up with bright, strong headlines and the slight feeling that the staff used to work for Heat! And that's why the IPKat likes it.

Rather more solemn than the IP Review is the June 2008 issue of Sweet & Maxwell's monthly European Intellectual Property Review. The IPKat's friend, dashing Polish scholar-blogger-practitioner Tomasz Rychlicki, has contributed an article, "GLPv3: New Software Licence and New Axiology of Intellectual Property Law": this deals with the evolution of GNU and FOSS software licence initiatives from their early history to their current emanations in the highly developed information society we have today.

Another computer software-related piece, this time by Paul Sugden of Monash University, considers the international prosecution of the "Drink or Die" software cracking and warez gang - an episode in which this part of the IPKat blogging team played a small consultancy role.

Also of note is the essay by OHIM's Jörg Weberndörfer on the integration of the operations of the Office, which administers the Community trade mark system, with the Madrid system for international trade mark registration -- and there's a neat case comment from Nottingham-based scholar Estelle Derclaye on Flashing Badge v Groves (noted here by the IPKat).

Full post as published by IPKat on May 15, 2008 (boomark / email).