Tuesday 28 April 2015

Calorie-free IP awareness-raising

16 March 2015, 3 pm

In London, Mr Davies and I go to meet some more CIPA members and their biscuits.  We are both trying not to eat calories today, and as everybody knows, biscuits are exactly where calories hide, so we decline the good-looking stuff and concentrate on the CIPA members instead.  They are saying we need to do something to raise awareness of IP and the IP professions.  They are not the first to say this and they probably won’t be the last.  You’d have thought we’d have come up with an answer by now. 

But the fact is, there is just so much to do and so few volunteers to help with it, and when it comes to spreading the word about IP you have to concede we are hampered by the fact that IP is essentially quite dull until you understand it, at which point it becomes essentially quite scary.  And there is no middle-ground for the people who would like not to be bored rigid but also not to be kept awake at night wondering if they have enough insurance.

Mr Davies’s latest harebrained scheme is to ask Professor Brian Cox to help us make IP more exciting, like rocket science and solar eclipses.  He has recently been appointed the Royal Society’s Professor for Public Engagement in Science, so it is about time he started getting the public engaged in patents as well because what is the point having science without patents?

But Professor Brian Cox has not yet answered our letter.

As we leave the meeting, our hosts are already stuffing their pockets with the uneaten biscuits.  You can almost hear the calories laughing. 

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