Holiday season

August is Europe's traditional holiday season and is reflected with blogs where news to blog about dries up somewhat. Aside from some short jaunts to Germany, Switzerland, Yorkshire and God's own county of Hertfordshire, I have not been on a proper holiday (sun, sea and sangria-style).

I appreciate this is a bit of a 'filler' but I decided to check if any of our IP Offices around the world made a planned shut down. It would appear not.

Unsurprisingly, employees at the USPTO are only granted leave for Federal holidays, which for 2014 will look like this. This has been this way since the mid-late 1980s.

In the UK, where we complain about our lack of public holidays compared to our European cousins, the UK IPO is closed on one day less than the USPTO. Of course, staff will receive more annual leave than their American counterparts and our public sector is known for being generous with this.

In Geneva, home of WIPO, their public holidays are more extensive including many typical European and Christian holidays as well as the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha and a purely local Geneva holiday.

There is an established Public Holiday Law in Japan which the Japan Patent Office follows. I was also interested to learn of Japan's 'Happy Monday System' whereby some holidays have been moved to a Monday to create a longer weekend. We have something similar in the UK, albeit without such a cool name, whereas in continental Europe if a holiday falls on a weekend it's tough, it won't be rolled over to the following Monday.

It will come as little shock to many that OHIM closes for the longest period of time - 18 days, with seven of these coming at Christmas and New Year. Being in Alicante on Spain's Costa Blanca, the weather isn't too bad either. For jobs at OHIM go here!

I hope readers of this blog enjoyed their holiday season. I hope I have more substantial things to blog about in the coming months.