A Day in the Life of an IP Blog-Meister

• Author: Jeremy Phillips

A blog is a quick, easy and generally free way of grabbing an audience. A do-it-yourself website, it enables the blogger to post news, comments, photos or video clips, and offer them to an audience as wide as the Internet itself.

There are no rules as to what a blogger can write about. Holiday fun, political diatribes and favourite recipes are just a few topics that have tempted ordinary folk to expose their opinions to the world. It is no surprise, then, that some bloggers have opted for intellectual property (IP) as their chosen topic. And since a blog is a personal account, no subject, nor any slant upon it, lies beyond the range of the IP bloggers - from those who rage against piracy free-riding on the creativity and investments of others, to those who rail against digital rights management or the pricing policies of the recording industries; from advocates of the protection of traditional knowledge, geographical indications or data, to champions of open source.

It is remarkable nonetheless - when you consider how busy most successful IP legal experts are, and just how much commentary on IP law and practice already exists - that so many specialist IP law blogs have sprung up. Early pioneers like The Trademark Blog in the United States have inspired private practitioners, academics and even Patent Office employees to place their reasoned understanding, their furious rants and their breaking news before an increasingly voracious readership.

While most bloggers are soloists, juggling multiple commitments, many successful blogs now are run as a team effort. Blog-posting software enables groups of individuals, sometimes writing from different time-zones, to keep up the flow with less stress. The six person team of the Class 46 blog - which specialises in European trademark law - spans nearly 1,900 km and five jurisdictions, while the prolific eight-strong team of Spicy IP in India produces a veritable cascade of news and views.

But can you trust them?

Critics of blogs complain that, while law journals are refereed and books carefully checked before publication, blogs undergo no equivalent quality control process. That's true, but most blogs enable readers to post their own comments, so that a blogger's mistakes can be pointed out, his questions answered and his position on issues of the day endorsed or rejected. Most IP...