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Is OAMI Live Dead?

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

In early April the IPKat welcomed a new blog, OAMI Live, which was described as "the very first independent blog where OAMI* staff and OAMI users can express and exchange views on any OAMI issues completely freely, without any constraint, control or whatsoever...". At the time, the IPKat welcomed this initiative and hoped that outsiders would make as much use of it as those who work for OAMI. Merpel added that this blog was a valuable tool for articulating grievances and suggestions not just for staff members and OAMI's users but for the Office itself. She hoped that OAMI would engage with OAMI Live's contributors in a spirit of mutual interest.

Visiting the OAMI Live blog five minutes ago, the IPKat was alarmed to read this message: "Blog has been removed. Sorry, the blog at oamilive.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs".

The IPKat is most concerned at this. While he did not find the contents of OAMI Live as entirely edifying and wholesome as he would have liked, it seemed to him that they represented a real expression of frustration and concern on the part of employees of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market as to how the Office is managed. He is not in a position to judge whether the Office or its critics are right or wrong, but what he believes is this: if the Office's critics and dissentients are wrong, they should be demonstrated to be in error -- and if they are correct in what they say, we should all know about it. If, as has been rumoured, OAMI has somehow had the blog closed down, the IPKat hopes that the counsel of good faith and commonsense on both sides will lead to its reopening -- as a valuable two-way channel for communication and as a fairly harmless way of letting off steam.

* OAMI: the Spanish acronym of OHIM (the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market, which administers the Community trade mark and design systems).

Full post as published by IPKat on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).