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. 

Da-da-da-DA!!!

16 March 2015, 10 am

“Right!” I shout.  “Gather round the flip charts!  We are going to make some plans.  Da-da-da-DA!!!”

My audience is the new Diversity Task Force.  It is great to have a task force again; I had forgotten how much fun I had with the namby-pamby non-core skills one.  I think I will impose a uniform again.  For half of us, the standard blue tights and red underpants.  For the other half, red tights and blue underpants.  A uniform is a Good Thing, but perhaps not when your aim is to improve diversity.

I herd people into four working groups, with a flip chart each, and tell them to make some plans for stuff we are going to do to improve diversity.  Towards the end, I gather everyone together again.  This is called a Plenary Session. 

I say to the first group, in my most plenary voice: “So, what have you decided?”  They say: “We have decided that this part of the task is very difficult and complex and we will need bags of time to do it in and lots of external funding.”  This stumps me.  I think perhaps there has been some misunderstanding about the words “task” and “force” and “action” and “plan”, and possibly also “working group”.  So I tell them: “Nonsense!”, trying to sound brave and plenary, “let’s just start on some little bits of this awesomely insurmountable task shall we, dip our toes in the water so to speak?” 

And they look at me as if to say: “You haven’t a clue what’s going on, have you?”

And I cannot deny it.  But having a clue what’s going on is an over-rated virtue.  Having a clue what’s going on is just asking for you to give up in despair.  And anyway it is better not to fill your brain with information – for instance about what’s going on – because then you have more space left for processing.  My brain is like RAM: there is not a lot in there at any one time, but feed it a question and it will give you an answer quite quickly, unimpeded by realism or caution or sense.  Usually: “Yes, why not?” or “Looks good to me.”

Unlabelled receiving means

16 March 2015, 9 am

On my way to CIPA, I manage to post a £20 note into the dustbin section of a self-service checkout. 

In my defence, I was extremely stressed.  The machine had rejected my credit card twice for no reason other than sheer bloody-mindedness, and in scrabbling around for cash from the depths of my straw-filled rucksack, I omitted to look sufficiently carefully at the different available orifices into which said cash might be introduced.  (They were not labelled.)  As a patent attorney, however, I am used to functional concepts: I found a receiving means, and it seemed to receive the £20 note alright, and only then did I spot a more appropriate-looking receiving means elsewhere.

I am so livid, I spend another five minutes inserting straw into the slot, stem by stem, just to teach them to label their receiving means properly.  My loathing for the self-service checkout goes up a notch to only-just-bearable-without-therapy.

I think I am likely to be banned from this shop.

Rushing around the CAPITAL

12 March 2015

I invite myself to the Informals’ Committee meeting, to let them know that Big CIPA still cares about  them.  They politely overlook the fact that I am Old and Outdated, and they very kindly buy me a drink and offer to send me some minutes afterwards.  I listen to them talking about the training and social events they are organising up and down the country, and I feel very humble because at Big CIPA we sometimes struggle to organise a plate of biscuits.

Then I rush across London to a posh dinner with a group called UNION-IP.  No-one at UNION-IP is able to tell me exactly what the group is about and who it is for, much less why it writes its name in CAPITALS so much of the time, but I see it has a website and a Wikipedia entry so I think they are perhaps not trying hard enough.  Anyway, because I arrive late due to being an Old Person guest at the Informals’ meeting, I end up being served my starter, main course and pudding all at the same time.  I eventually catch up but I’m not convinced it was a particularly elegant affair.

UNION-IP is known for having influential speakers at its dinners, like judges and senior patent office people.  Tonight’s speaker is from the IPO and he is telling us about patent harmonisation.  Lots of countries want global patent harmonisation, he says, but every country has its own version of Harmony and usually this looks pretty much like its own current patent system.  Also every country would like to be able to opt out of the bits of Harmony it doesn’t like.  And to provide more Harmony for its own nationals than for foreigners.  Then there are the regional offices, who would also like to be in charge of Harmony but on a bigger scale, although clearly in the case of the EPO it may be difficult to find harmony of any kind right now, particularly among its workforce.

The PRESIDENT of UNION-IP points out that if there is HARMONY then we will all be out of a JOB.  No worries.  There will be a few jobs spare at the EPO by then.

A manifesto is born

10 March 2015

Mr Davies has condensed 52 pages of flip chart scribbles into two pages of proper, posh CIPA manifesto.  It is impressive.  He has peppered it with long words to make us think we actually came up with something cogent at our not-a-Council-meeting.  And he has set the noun:verb ratio suitably high so as to show the government that we are a Proper Serious Institute, which is also why a lot of the document is in the passive voice and the nothing-to-do-with-me-this-is-a-declaration-from-on-high third person singular.  CIPA is proud of its manifesto and the reader is invited to support it.

Mr Davies was no ordinary plumber.  His customers were invited to attend to the maintenance of their own drainage outlets.

Of course, we do not know which flavour of government will ultimately have to deal with our noun-rich proposals.  However, it seems likely that whoever takes charge of the UK this May, they are going to take some persuading that IP is a big agenda item, and that is exactly what this manifesto is for.  We want the world to be in no doubt about its priorities when it comes to intangible assets.

We will be doing a separate Idiot’s Guide to IP for Those in Power, and that will not be peppered with long words and passive verbs.  It will be more along the lines of: This is a patent.  This is a trade mark.  Jane has a patent.  Peter has a patent.  The patent is not copyrighted.  The trade mark is nothing to do with the performing arts.  No-one has patented human life yet.  The creative industries are not the only ones who have IP.  Look, Jane, this is an engineer!

I add my comments to Mr Davies’s amazing draft.  They don’t make it any better.  But they do make me feel useful.

IP and bankers

5 March 2015

I meet with some people from ITMA and some people from the IPO, to talk about IP audits and spreading the IP message to SMEs.  The conversation turns to the IP triage thing I suggested when they were foolish enough to let me address a roomful of business advisers last autumn.  We think IP triage is a great idea, say the people from the IPO. 

There is a pause, whilst we all think about the great idea, and how great it would be to have IP triage check-lists and IP triage training for business advisers, and business triage training for IP attorneys.  And then there is another pause, whilst we all think about how we have no spare time in which to do those things and how nice it would be if someone else said they would do them for us.

After the two pauses, we agree to “give it some more thought”.  This is meeting-speak for putting it on the to-do list, moving it on every week and hoping no-one will mention it again until next time. 

The IPO people show us their about-to-be-published pamphlet called the “IP Finance Toolkit”.  The purpose of this pamphlet is to help businesses explain to their bank managers why it is OK to lend them money using their IP as security.  This is not something bank managers are renowned for doing.  The pamphlet has a check-list of ways to convince your bank manager – or more likely your Customer Relationship Manager who lives 250 miles away – that your IP is genuine and is being properly managed and is actually in better shape than either your office or your car.

It seems odd to me that bankers, who have no trouble at all with things like derivatives and futures, should be reluctant to lend money against a patent or trade mark.  At least patents and trade marks actually exist.  Not like derivatives, which are not only intangible but downright incomprehensible and are in any case themselves derived from other, even less tangible, things that seem only vaguely associated with reality.  If IP is the Emperor’s new clothes (and who am I to suggest that but, hey, just saying), then derivatives are surely his new potential dry cleaning bills.

Creative writing and life advice (and scaring the auditor)

3 March 2015

I spent most of yesterday and today writing my speech.  When you are a brilliant creative writer like me ha ha, at least a third of your writing time is spent looking out of the window in search of inspiration, and another third preparing and consuming refreshments.  And that is my excuse for only having written three pages in two days and for most of the three pages to be less interesting than the washing instructions on my underwear. 

 

4 March 2015, 11 am

We have invited the auditor to our Internal Governance Committee meeting.  The auditor said he was too busy but he sent a junior auditor instead and the junior auditor looks like he wishes he’d been too busy as well.  He wears a pained expression.  He explains anxiously, and in detail, the notes to the annex to the bit about the audit that really counts.  He does not say anything much about our actual finances. 

We suspect the auditors have absolutely no idea what CIPA does for a living and don’t like to ask.  They probably think we are some kind of self-help group for misguided old codgers. 

 

4 March 2015, 10 pm

Now I am in a hotel room writing a last-minute blog for the IPO, who have realised that it is International Women’s Day on Sunday and couldn’t think of anyone better suited to write a last-minute blog about women and IP than someone who is not much good at either but known for being a prolific keyboard-basher.

In my blog, I say that women do not have to be domestic goddesses in order to make it in the world of IP.  It is enough just to be good at IP, I say.  I feel the need to state this because it is not always immediately obvious from the stuff people write about women in the professions. 

I have a 700-word limit, so I am not able to include my Vital Advice to Women in IP Who Are Not Domestic Goddesses.  But clearly, whilst it is OK not to be a domestic goddess, there are certain social and professional situations which you then need to steer clear of.  Like, inviting people round to your place for dinner.  Like, agreeing to make birthday cakes or fancy dress costumes for your offspring (because that is what supermarkets are for).