Grand plans

7 October 2014

I begin planning my Grand Tour in earnest.  So far I have had invitations to Cardiff, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, Derby and Munich.  These are all from people who took pity on me and decided that having me round for an hour or so and offering me a caramel custard tart would be a small price to pay for me LEAVING THEM ALONE for the rest of the year.

The Munich invitation is particularly attractive.  However, I am not sure the Internal Governance Committee, with its new expenses policy, is going to countenance a trip to the Christmas markets, even if it does yield a bit of feedback from CIPA members and even if I do promise to bring back a large Lebkuchen heart. 

The Committee holds a meeting this afternoon.  I don’t mention Munich.    

The next gigs are in Oxford and Cardiff.  Fortunately both these places are pretty much on the M4 although with Oxford you have to be a bit creative to make that happen and it is the type of creativity that the Highways Agency is not always comfortable with.  I think Derby and Edinburgh are on the M4 too, roughly.  I do not think Munich is on the M4. 

I spend the rest of the day, when I am not browsing through my 1998 Road Atlas of Great Britain (New Improved showing Speed Cameras & Little Chefs® & Other Things You Want to Avoid at All Costs), doing proper serious CIPA stuff.  I get some papers ready for the oral proceedings course.  I plan a meeting about diversity in the IP professions.  I arrange to make a speech at an IPO-run conference for business advisors.  I very nearly start writing the speech, but get side-tracked by a gin and tonic.  I know none of these things will look as exciting on YouTube® as a country bumpkin emptying straw out of her rucksack, but they may go some way to showing I am earning my keep.  Or at least that I am not just watching the washing machine go round any more.

Making an impact - with straw

6 October 2014

I am on the CIPA LinkedIn® discussion forum.  “You’re making an impact!” it crows excitedly.  I am?  Well, there’s a thing!  If I reach the Top Contributor level, it tells me, I will get a “group badge”.  Yay!  Presumably these badges are also available at £1 a pack from Tesco®.  Is there no end to the decorations I can acquire with the weekly groceries?

It appears I have been making an impact largely because of the straw I shed during my VeePee speech at Congress.  People have been asking when the performance will be viewable on YouTube®.  Worse, Mr Davies has been telling them it will be soon.  I am thinking: it is possible to be famous for the wrong reasons, and straw is probably one of them.  Right now I am not exactly shining through as the Institute’s most eminent and authoritative VeePee ever.

SILC and free beer

4 October 2014

I meet with a large group of IP attorneys and spoil their evening meal by talking to them about CIPA.  In the circumstances, they are remarkably polite.

Some interesting feedback emerges.  They have no recollection of Mr Lampert’s buzzy new e-newsletter.  (I can only think their spam filters have consigned it to the same folder as the bulletins from the Nigerian prince.)  They have never heard of SILC.  They do not realise they missed Congress this week.  And they regard the CIPA Journal as an elaborate way of sending them a plastic bag once a month. 

They have no idea who I am or why I am here.  Although to be fair, often I don’t either.

It is hard to initiate a meaningful debate on the value of CIPA membership, because none of them knows what CIPA membership costs.  I ask them to guess.  They hardly get above the reserve price.  Then I ask what they would like CIPA to provide as part of the membership package.  There is a silence, then a stirring at the back of the room, and finally someone shouts: “Free beer!”

I fear this may be getting out of hand.  Exactly which part of SILC do they think stands for Free Beer??

Empty nests & burnt granola

4 October 2014

My eldest daughter leaves for university.  I am supposed to suffer from empty nest syndrome.  But actually the nest is far from empty; it is still full of all the rubbish she was told to clear out a month ago.

She is hoping that the Tidying-Up Pixies will visit whilst she’s busy pretending to do a degree.  Personally I would rather it were the Environmental Health Pixies.  They will need industrial tools to deal with some of this mess.

I have been led to believe that Proper Mothers hold their children’s hands all the way to their first hall of residence, and make their beds for them and leave home-baked goodies and freshly-laundered clothes before waving a tearful goodbye.  The reality, in our family, is that I am off doing CIPA-related things on the day she leaves; that she will do her own laundry like she always does, or if she doesn’t then she will smell and make no friends; and that I know there is no point making the bed because she will only go and sleep in it and if the bed-linen has to last a whole term it is probably better left in its packaging.  I do however send her off with a tub of home-made slightly-burnt granola, which is just about all I know how to make. 

Anyway she will be staying within ten minutes’ walk of Paddington station.  She thinks this may be good because when I come to London on CIPA business I will be able to call in and take her out for dinner.  What she doesn’t know is that I will be calling in and asking to kip on her floor instead of in a cheapskate CIPA-sanctioned hotel with a pocket-sized bar of soap and a bedroom only just big enough to hold it.

I suspect Proper Mothers do not ask to kip on their daughters’ floors for the night.  And I confess to being a tad worried about what I will find there.  Slightly-burnt granola, for a start.

CIPA Congress 2014: the highlights

3 October 2014, 8 pm

I have noticed that proper bloggers write summaries of the conferences they go to.  So on the train home I attempt to distil the key messages from CIPA Congress 2014.  Here is the result.

Keynote speech by the IP Minister: IP is lovely; every business should have one.

Session 1: try to build yourself a portfolio of lovely IP before your employees build it for you and put it on Facebook®.

Session 2: IP portfolio management is all about risk management.

Session 3: some things are going to happen in trade mark law.  (I may have mis-remembered this.  I am not a trade mark expert.)

Keynote speech by an EPO Director: it’s OK; we are getting some more printers.  And some new Guidelines.

Session 4: prosecuting an IP portfolio is all about risk management.  Except in the US, where it is just about risk.

Session 5: EPO opposition hearings are all about damage limitation.  The best person to limit the damage for you is a barrister, who is properly trained to make damage look entertaining.

Keynote speech by a US attorney: USPTO post-grant review will kill your patents.  All of them.  Even the best-trained barrister may struggle to make this look entertaining. 

Session 6: IP litigation strategy is all about risk management.

Session 7: IP licensing is all about risk management.

Vice-President’s address: here is some straw.

Keynote speech by a senior Oxfam advisor: IP is not lovely.  IP is evil.

Response by GSK: oh no it isn’t.

Audience: boo!

Session 8: risk management is probably outside your budget.  It may also be outside the scope of your indemnity insurance.  Greece is a good place to set up a manufacturing node because of the baklava.  (I may have mis-remembered this bit too.)  The CJEU is not half as bad as you think, especially if you hire a barrister to make it seem more entertaining.

Session 9 (CIPA open meeting on SILC): CIPA is lovely and is going to do lots of lovely things for its members.  Also please can we come round for a coffee and a chat and do you happen to have any caramel custard tarts?

I hope my readers find this a useful summary.  But just in case I have missed anything important, the whole thing was being filmed.  The box-set should be available before Christmas.

Adventures at Congress

3 October 2014, 2 pm

It has been quite a morning.  I had to make my VeePee speech to a roomful of hungry delegates.  There was a timer on the lectern, counting down the minutes till lunchtime, in case I was in any doubt about how long people wanted to listen to me for.  I ignored it.

Embarrassingly, I spent a significant chunk of my allotted time unpacking my rucksack in order to find my notes.  I unpacked quite a few other things as well, including a fair amount of straw which is now strewn around the panel discussion area.  Finally I located my notes inside a copy of Farmer’s Weekly that I had brought for the EyePeePee because it had a picture of a big green tractor on the front. 

The straw was not mine either: it belonged to Mr Davies’ chickens.  It smelt a bit funny.  

The key learning outcome from my talk was that you can buy CIPA Vice-Presidential medals from Tesco®.  They are only £1 a pack, which is excellent value considering that if you are wearing one of these, you can tell anyone at CIPA what to do.  Apart from Council, obviously. 

I also talked about what’s on the horizon for the IP profession.  I only mentioned pirates once.  The rest of the time I told people that they will have to learn to do new things and open their hearts to other professionals, even those who are not mega-beings, and now and then ask their clients what type of industry they are in.  I said they will have to face horrible, horrible new competitors the like of which they cannot even imagine right now but who probably have terrible tusks and terrible claws and poisonous divisionals at the ends of their noses.

I exhorted them to be bold and brave and to forge ahead relishing the new challenges.  Then I told them IP is like water and they must build dams to harness its power.  But it is also like a growing plant.  And they should not sit in ivory towers.  By the end we were all totally confused.  But I spoke with power and conviction and authority even though I actually said very little at all, and also I spoke with quite a loud voice, so I think I may have got away with it. 

Afterwards someone said I ought to be a politician.  So perhaps I did not get away with it after all.

Now they are making me do an interview on camera.  The man with the hairy sausage-dog-on-a-stick microphone is there again.  I had problems with him when I went to Congress two years ago, but this time I am ready for him.  This time I stare him straight in the eye, ignoring the hairy sausage-dog-on-a-stick, and tell him that Congress has been the best thing that’s happened to me all year.  He says can I point to any specific highlights?  I say no, I cannot.  I cannot remember any of the speakers’ names or topics or where they came from or what they said.  But it was nice to see them all.  The sausage-dog-on-a-stick exudes disappointment.

The final session of the day is the CIPA open meeting about SILC.  I sit on a panel with Mr Davies, the Pee and the EyePeePee and also our youngest Council member (who is only allowed here because he spotted his first grey hair this week).  We are surrounded by straw.  The EyePeePee is still reading Farmer’s Weekly.

I am clutching the control box for my radio mic.  Despite the fact that I have had proper media training, and therefore know all about sound engineers, I have still accidentally worn a frock for the day.  There is nowhere on this frock to put the control box.  For my speech earlier they attached it to my collar, and I walked on stage looking like a Cyberman.  The very patient sound engineer somehow managed to drip-feed the wires down my back, which was an unusual sensation but not entirely unpleasant, and which may have gone some way to explaining the enthusiasm in my voice. 

Now, however, my collar is drooping due to the earlier chai tea session, and the box and collar have parted company.  The sound engineer did offer to lend me his belt, bless him, so that I could look like a Cyberman with a bum-bag, but I did not like the thought of his trousers falling down during the panel discussion and distracting the EyePeePee from his tractors.  So I opted to clutch the control box in my sweaty little hand and hope it did not give me an electric shock every time the electromagnetic control rays arrived.

The open meeting is live online webcasted so we have questions from the internet as well as the delegates in the room.  The ones in the room have seen the swanky printed three-year strategic plan: they probably nicked it from the CIPA stand while they were browsing through the CIPA tat I mean memorabilia and doing guess-the-age-of-the-Council-member and having their faces painted (it was a really good stand). 

They say: This strategic plan looks a bit ambitious.  I say: We must be bold and brave and forge ahead relishing the new challenges like a growing reservoir by an ivory tower.  Mr Davies says perhaps it is time to go for drinks. 

And thus does Congress 2014 come to a bold, brave and forged-ahead end.

Tai chi or chai tea?

3 October 2014, 8 am

I am at CIPA Congress.  The programme says that if I am up early enough I can go for tai chi in the park.  This sounds like fun so I do.  It is a glorious autumn morning, mist above the Serpentine, fallen leaves under the feet, backlit Subway® wrappers strewn across the paths.  There are very few patent attorneys around and all is right with the world.

My first disappointment is finding out that I had confused tai chi with chai tea.  We are not going to sit around with hot drinks and croissants after all.  Instead we are going to stand in the sopping wet grass doing funny things with our arms and being aware of ourselves.  Oh, I am aware of myself alright.  So are a lot of passers-by.

I have never done chai tea before and I discover that I am not really cut out for it.  It is not for the impatient.  I could draft half a patent spec in the time it takes us to transfer our weight from one foot to the other. 

The instructor tells me I should relax my shoulders.  I do not think so.  My shoulders are tense for a reason.  It is because they are responsible for keeping my head off my chest, and this is a challenge at a two-day conference.  I transfer my weight sulkily back to the other foot, and moon-walk back through the sopping wet grass.  The squirrels regard me with contempt.  I have not found spiritual fulfilment, or indeed croissants, and now I am late for the first coffee session of the day.

At least I didn’t fall for the “get up early and swim in the Serpentine” scam on day one.