FameLab is great!

22 April 2015, 7.30 pm

We go on to the finals of an event called FameLab.  FameLab is great.  You get young enthusiastic scientists and you give them three minutes to talk in an entertaining and fired-up kind of way about something scientific, and then you decide who was the most entertaining and fired-up and give them a massive cardboard cheque which no-one will cash.  The speakers are not allowed Powerpoint®, only props, which is certainly a good starting point if you are aiming to entertain.

Most of the young enthusiasts were not even born when I drank my first gin and tonic, or indeed my thousandth.  (I am currently at 8,912 although the real total may be higher as some of my memories aren’t 100% numerically reliable.)  From them we learn many things, however:

1. Weedkiller + rocket fuel + fireworks = oxygen.  And, perhaps more scarily, this is how oxygen is generated on board an aircraft when the cabin pressure drops.  (On EasyJet® you pay a separate supplement for each of the three ingredients, and obviously there is little point just paying for the first two.)  I am not sure about the ratios of the reactants, so you should not try this at home even if you do happen to have a supply of rocket fuel in your garage.
2. Puffer fish toxins can be used to create zombies.  Or indeed just normal dead people.
3. When you are in love, lots of hormones surge around your body and this is why you act strangely.  If you act strangely at other times, there may be another reason, and you should seek professional help.
4. Crystallisation is a bit like people dancing the Macarena in a night club.  If you turn the wrong way at the wrong time you create a different polymorph.  As a chemist but a rather muddled one, suddenly I understand much better now.
5. The number 1 appears loads more times than any other number.  No matter where you look.  You can use this to detect fraud because if a set of accounts has the same number of 1s as 2s or 3s or 4s, someone is clearly not being a proper mathematician.

1. Insulin is produced by angry E. coli bacteria, who would presumably rather be in someone’s gut causing life-threatening illnesses than sitting on a petri dish being genetically-engineered to save people.

1. The colour magenta doesn’t exist.  So really, we should all stop using it.  This should instantly reduce the price of printer ink by a quarter.

1. Expectant fathers can make themselves useful during labour (no, really), by plotting the duration and frequency of contractions on a spreadsheet and using simple mathematical models to predict the eventual time of birth.  Apparently there is an app to help you do this.  Apparently it is not very popular with expectant mothers.  Apparently they are not hugely interested in lines of best fit.

Anyway, Mr Davies and I are hoping that next year we can find some young enthusiastic patent attorneys to be all entertaining and fired-up in the FameLab competition.  But we are thinking that a certain amount of reconditioning may be necessary to turn a patent attorney into an entertainer, so we are probably better off asking trainees not senior partners.

Shaun the Sheep™

22 April 2015, 5.30 pm

Mr Davies, Mr Lampert, the EyePeePee Train Man and I have come to see Shaun the Sheep™ outside the Royal Exchange, with some patent attorney friends.  We are offered rather interesting canapés, which Mr Davies is a bit picky about, but I notice he is not quite so picky over the drinks he’s been given. 

After the canapés, Mr Davies takes a photo of me with Shaun the Sheep and sends the photo off to be Twittered about.  He says I should have climbed onto Shaun’s back for a more domineering type of pose but I don’t think I should risk my posh frock, or my reputation, in front of all those people. 

I would like it to be known that if the Vice-President of CIPA appears to lack dignity, it is not entirely her fault.

A Very Important Lunch (or: the Battle of the Turnip Balls)

22 April 2015, 1 pm

I am at lunch with the Very Important Man who has the ear of Government when it comes to professional business services.  But it is OK because there are other patent attorneys there, as well as the Pee and the EyePeePee and the Chief Eggsek, so I do not have to say much and when I do there are plenty of people to kick me under the table.

It is a posh lunch.  The Very Important Man has a remote control at his side to summon in the next course whenever he gets bored with my conversation.  When we run out of courses he will summon Security.

We tell him about what we see on the horizon for the UK’s IP professions.  I am glad that we have just put together our Magnificent Manifesto, because this shows that we actually have been up in the crow’s nest with our telescopes recently rather than mumbling grumpily below deck like we used to.

During the discussions, I engage in a private battle with the posh lunch.  This raises one or two questions in my mind.  How, in polite company, are you supposed to handle turnip balls?  What kind of person has time to fashion perfect spheres out of flavourless root vegetables?  And what happens to the rest of the turnip?  Are the nation’s food banks overflowing with turnip ball peripheries?  These are first world questions, I know, but right now I could do with some answers.  I do not want to launch a turnip ball into the lap of the Very Important Man just when the others are telling him that the IP profession is crucial to the economy.

IP and the Economy

22 April 2015, 10.30 am

A group of us meet with the IPO’s economists.  They are planning all sorts of research into the impact of IP on the Economy.  This is good because there was a time when the Economy hardly knew IP existed or indeed cared.  These days it is getting more interested, having realised that due to the difficulty in putting a value on intangible assets, they are extremely useful for creating extra wealth when you need it.

The IPO’s research will be bold and ground-breaking.  For example, they are hoping to get statistics on IP licensing and royalties.  So long as their respondents don’t complain that this looks more like industrial espionage than research.

Some foreign IP offices are working with the IPO's economists too.  So at CIPA we are pleased to be involved because we are hoping to spread the word that if you need information about IP in Europe, there is no better place to come than 95 Chancery Lane.  We are also hoping to add in some industrial espionage I mean research of our own.  For instance, we are going to suggest that the IPO spearheads a global investigation into What the Germans Will Be Up to Next, as well as The International Impact of Chartered Patent Attorneys Being Absolutely Brilliant.

At the personal level, I am hoping that the research into IP and the Economy will reveal that my life has had some meaning after all, and not, as my kids have always maintained, that it has been squandered on delusional and ultimately meaningless navel-gazing. 

Sherpa Groups & dodgy videos

21 April 2015

I have called a teleconference of the diversity task force leaders.  These are the poor unfortunates who’ve agreed to wear extra sparkly blue tights and red underpants, and to lead the four strands of work we’re doing to improve diversity.  The meeting involves me asking the others what they’ve done in their individual working groups so far, whilst not actually admitting that I haven’t done anything myself.  This is a high-level management technique known as “pulling all the strands together”.  Shortly I will draw myself an Over-Arching Roadmap, like there is for the UPC, so that I can see who is doing what whilst I’m busy doing nothing.

I have heard it said that these days, working groups are called “Sherpa Groups”, by the people who sit above them drawing over-arching roadmaps.  I understand this is something to do with the fact that Sherpas do most of the hard work.  But it is also because Sherpas know where they are going and can get there on their own without interference from upper management, thank you.

The key thing that is happening at the moment – and it is happening Very Fast because the Informals are involved and they don’t hang around – is that we are recording some video clips about how great it is in the IP professions.  We are going to include lots of people from lots of different backgrounds, to show the next generation how open and inclusive the IP professions are, even to ragamuffins like the EyePeePee or straw-shedding numpties like me.

We are going to make the videos all rough and blurred and shaky, which is partly so that they will appeal to Youngsters and partly because it is cheaper that way; you can use your mate’s smartphone in the pub after work.  For the time being we are overlooking the bit in the Code of Conduct about preserving the dignity and good standing of the IP professions.  And let’s face it once we let Diversity in, and all those black transgender women from inner city prison schools, there will be very little dignity and good standing left to preserve.  We will have to rewrite the Code of Conduct to say:

1. Just turn up to work every now and then, OK?
2. And don’t nick things from your client.
3. Or at least not without issuing an invoice.
4. And if you do nick things, keep them in a separate client account.
5. Try to tell the truth, especially if you are leaking stuff on social media.  (Guidance note: truth is stuff that more than two of your mates agree with.)
6. The rest is up to you, innit?

Regional reps

20 April 2015

It appears we have another volunteer to be a Regional Representative.  This one is for Merseyside and the North-West.  We also have one for the Land of Cat-flaps I mean Flat Caps (ie T’Oop North But Not the Bit on t’Wrong Side o’ t’Pennines) and one for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight (ie The Seaside).  We have a potential volunteer for the Wess Curntry too, but he is still thinking about whether it is wise to take responsibility for what happens in Zummerzet bearing in mind the amount of straw there is.  I hope he agrees anyway.

It is going to be great being a regional rep.  You will be able to run happy hours, and happy hours disguised as CPD seminars, and happy hours disguised as Collaborative Training Experiences, all on your own doorstep and subsidised by CIPA.  You will be sent hot-off-the-press Institute news to disseminate among the patent attorneys in your region, and when they complain you will be able to channel the complaints directly to CIPA without needing to spend hours on LinkedIn®.  You will have your own email address, and a bit of space on the whizzy new website when it is built.  You may even get a list of CIPA members in your region, once the replacement database is up and running, which is quite a luxury because at the moment if anyone wants such complex information the Membership Team have to spend hours on Google Maps.

And if you are ambitious, you will be able to build up enough of a following to push for devolution, which is quite fashionable these days, and then you will be able to have your own Council and your own Presidential swimming-gala medal. 

But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.  Let’s just start with the happy hours.

All about Council

19 April 2015

I decide to prepare some guidelines for new Council members.  In the past, when you joined Council, it all came as a nasty shock. 

So I start writing.  First I explain about CIPA’s Governance Structure and how Council fits into it; I do not mention square pegs and round holes although I am tempted to.  Then I explain how Council meetings work, which they don’t, usually, so I have to make a lot of this up.  Finally I explain what is expected of Council members.  This bit is cribbed from what I have heard Mr Davies say he would like Council members to do.  I might have to add a glossary for some of the terms he uses, because they are not normally in a patent attorney’s vocabulary.

I include guidance on reclaiming expenses (primarily, don’t try anything clever because the IGC will see straight through it) and on CIPA’s current biscuit policy.  Then I explain about Council being transparent and accountable, especially to its own members, which is why we always get shown the agenda a day or so in advance and not just at the meeting like on some of the committees, and we always get shown the minutes to make sure they say what we thought we’d said and not what other people heard, and we sometimes get shown the papers in case we want to understand what we’re making decisions about although clearly this bit is optional because as all good meeting attendees know, a decision is best made on the day once you know how your arch-enemy is going to vote.

In the bit about the Governance Structure, I get a bit fancy-pantsy and lyrical and talk about Council being the brain and conscience of the Institute and the committees and staff being its eyes and ears and limbs.  This is stretching a metaphor, I know, because if Council really were a brain then all the psychotherapists in the world wouldn’t know what to do with it, but I am relying on the Poetic Licence defence.

The EyePeePee, who is a bit soft like that, says he would like to see a reference to the Institute’s heart.  Tumbleweed drifts through our inboxes.  Eventually I say Perhaps the heart of CIPA is its members?  I say this because the brain cannot function without the heart but the heart can keep beating long after the brain has departed the real world, and this seems entirely appropriate in the context.  Mr Davies asks Which bit of the Institute is the liver?, and I know he has asked this because the liver produces bile but I refuse to rise to the bait.  I am not going to go through Gray’s Anatomy assigning organs to the various parts of CIPA; that way would surely lie disaster.  Although I can think of an obvious medical metaphor for the Vice-President who got in by accident and is waiting to be found out.