19 April 2016, 4 pm
The ITMA Pee has beaten me to it. He has somehow managed to throw off his chains of office and cast them around the neck of a new victim. I am cross that he got there before me, but I have to concede that because he has served a two-year term, his need may be marginally greater than mine right now. The new ITMA Pee is a trade mark attorneyette. I am looking forward to going drinking – I mean holding Presidential Summits – with her, like I did with the old ITMA Pee. Although obviously I do not mean old old, just out-of-date old. And anyway the new unbiased, inclusive me is happy to go drinking, I mean hold Presidential Summits, with anyone, of any age and any gender, out-of-date or not, even a trade mark attorney who has only just become chartered, 125 years late. I will introduce the new ITMA Pee to my Inclusive Networks and tell her she is free to disagree with me, even if that makes me cry, although she will probably not need to because there is plenty of evidence that it isn’t worth the effort. And she and I will never make an important Presidential decision unless we are feeling 100% relaxed and comfortable, for instance during a Presidential Drinking Summit. ITMA are clever because they also have a First VeePee and a Second VeePee and a Treasurer, all of whom move up one rung every two years until by the time they get to be Pee, they know everything and everyone and needn’t feel scared at all. At CIPA we prefer to take a random VeePee from nowhere, and a random Pee who has only just got the hang of being a random VeePee, and we throw them into the lions’ den (ie Council) and enjoy the spectacle. This means that anyone can be Pee (which is Good, from a diversity and inclusivity point of view), but also that anyone can be Pee (which is Bad, from a credibility point of view).
0 Comments
19 April 2016, 2.30 pm
I listen to a recording of yesterday’s webinar on unconscious bias. This is Part II, and it is more nitty-gritty and less namby-pamby. The speaker, not mincing his words, tells us that we are all biased and it is about time we got on and did something about it, instead of just saying yeah yeah everyone’s equal round here, even the oddball we told to work in the basement. At the end, he says that we must each go away and think about what we are going to do to make ourselves less biased and our workplaces more inclusive. He sounds like he means it. Inspired, I find the pen and paper I was accidentally sitting on, and write down ten things I must do to unbias myself.
See, I have actually learnt quite a lot from the webinar. I am looking forward to the new, inclusive me. I’ll bet Council is too. 18 April 2016, 5 pm
The tiny proposal I sent to Council has received a not-so-tiny thumbs down. The tiny proposal was to do with preparing more guidance for our members about Brexit. But there is no point preparing guidance, Council members say, because Brexit might never happen and if it does, we have no idea what it will look like. I have some sympathy with this view, but I cannot help thinking that if we keep on waiting for clarity and certainty before we step in to help our members, then we will rarely step in at all. And when we do, they will not need us because there will be clarity and certainty anyway. What would happen, I wonder, if we were to refuse to draft our clients’ patent applications because their inventions were insufficiently clear in scope or certain of success? Or decline to give freedom to operate opinions because we didn’t yet know what the courts were going to decide? It never ceases to amaze me that a profession built around defining the indefinable, the intangible, the unpredictable, can be so paranoid about precision at the strategic level. But then, it probably amazes the rest of Council that someone like me could have qualified to draft patent claims and yet be so waffly and arm-wavy in office. Maybe it goes to prove that I should never have been put there in the first place, and that the demise of the Presidential swimming gala medal is a fitting end to the whole debacle. 18 April 2016, 2 pm
The Highly Experienced Examiners are giving the Highly Experienced Attorney (aka Mr Roberts, aka all sorts of other unprintable things which I have called him in the last 24 hours) a hard time. At CIPA Hall, Mr Mercer (aka the Onssek, and very good with commas) is chairing the event and supervising communications between the two locations. Last time we did this, Mr Roberts was at CIPA and Mr Mercer was the Highly Experienced Attorney in The Hague. But Mr Roberts upset everyone, by inciting the audience to propose an auxiliary request that didn’t appear anywhere in the cleverly-scripted script, thus causing many off-camera expletives. This is why Mr Roberts and Mr Mercer have swapped places, so that the Highly Experienced Examiners can keep a closer eye on Mr Roberts and his off-the-wall ideas about auxiliarising. The first thing that happens is that we need to fix the screens, because all we have at CIPA is a telescope-lens view of the mock hearing room. Personally I am quite at home with this, having spent the weekend drafting tiny documents on two-thirds of a lap-sized screen, but the other delegates are not so happy. I will try to fix it, says one of the Highly Experienced Examiners. But it turns out his High Experience does not extend as far as he thought. Now I will fetch The IT Guy, says the Highly Experienced Examiner, conceding defeat. We do not particularly need a wider view of Mr Roberts and his ruthless sense of humour, I am thinking. But we get it anyway. The four of them – Mr Roberts and his interlocutors – put in a sterling performance in their hearing room drama. Every now and then, the Examiners call an adjournment, and Mr Roberts has to disappear off camera, from whence he presumably pulls faces at the Examiners while they discuss what to do with him. Occasionally he reappears when he is not supposed to. Wherever he goes, he carries a sheaf of papers to make it look like he really is in possession of all the relevant facts, instead of just making it up as he goes along. A cameo role is played by a figure in black, who now and then emerges from behind a screen and then slinks furtively out of view again. He must be The IT Guy. At the CIPA end, Mr Mische plays a similar role and also sorts out the air conditioning, because he is versatile like that. 18 April 2016, 3 pm Mr Roberts has stuck to the script so far. But it couldn’t last. He has submitted his last-ditch auxiliary request. He has just about got it admitted. The Examiners are just about convinced that it complies with the EPC, largely because it is too narrow to constitute patent protection. And then he says: I would like to add an additional product claim, please, to the ridiculously narrow method claim you have just admitted. The Highly Experienced Examiners are incredulous. Their experience may be high and it may be wide, but it does not extend to this type of bare-faced cheek. They adjourn. Mr Roberts moves off screen, papers and all. We are privy to the Examiners’ discussions, which can be summarised (once the huffing and puffing have been removed) as: Not a chance. Mr Roberts returns to hear his fate, which he heard anyway and has already pulled faces about. I did it for educational purposes, he says. I didn’t really expect you to allow it. I will remember that, if I ever have to lose at oral proceedings again. I will do it for educational purposes. Later, I text Mr Roberts to thank him for his contribution. He texts back to say that the Highly Experienced Examiners have decided it is better for him to stay in London after all. 17 April 2016
Mr Gwilym Roberts thinks it would be funny to pretend he’s forgotten about tomorrow’s mock hearing. The one that requires him to be at the EPO in The Hague playing the role of a Highly Experienced Attorney in a cleverly-scripted hearing room drama, to which there will be a live link-up through CIPA Hall. It’s the Monday after, he says. It so isn’t the Monday after. I briefly wonder how quickly I can get from the Wess Curntry to The Hague tomorrow morning, and whether anyone will notice that the role of Highly Experienced Attorney is instead being played by a straw-shedding numpty. I decide this is not a viable option, so I panic instead. At 10 pm Mr Roberts finally deigns to send the text that says: Ha ha, only kidding. I dig deep but I cannot find my sense of humour. 18 April 2016, 8 am “Munich here I come,” says Mr Roberts’s next message. Once again I am struggling to understand the ruthless wit of a Highly Experienced Attorney, for whom popping over to the EPO for a hearing is just one big joke. Well if he does go to Munich, he had better not come back to 95 Chancery Lane afterwards. For it is a little known fact that the CIPA Pee has the authority to impose forfeits on Fellows who cause trouble (Annex to Bye-law 119 (b)), and I have a vivid imagination. In the meantime, I hope they give him a hard time in the cleverly-scripted hearing. The Highly Experienced Examiners have my permission to deviate mercilessly from the script in the interests of revenge. 15 April 2016
I take an early flight home from Edinburgh. It feels like the middle of the night before. The novices are doing the morning shift too, so I don’t chance it with the fruit toast. All I want to do is sleep. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Edinburgh gin. And indeed the stewards have barely started on the spiel about life jackets before I am out for the count. They have to kick me off the plane when we reach Brizzle, because I am getting in the way of the sweeping up. 16 April 2016 My son, who is studying to be an android, has been talking nicely to my two-thirds-functioning laptop. He has persuaded it to display things on the working two-thirds of the screen, so that I can reach the email attachment button again. The pay-off is that everything is now one-third smaller. So whilst I am in theory fully functional (in the IT sense, you understand), I can only do tiny things. To celebrate, I write a tiny presentation with bijou handouts, a tiny proposal to Council and nineteen tiny emails. I then practise the tiny presentation, to rapturous but very quiet applause from the dust mites. 14 April 2016, 5 pm
A highly exciting OGM follows – again, my last as President. We approve the ballot list for this year’s Council elections, which will not be proper elections at all because we don’t have enough candidates to fill all 26 seats. But we do have candidates for both the Pee and the VeePee roles, so all I have to do now is keep reminding the current VeePee to turn up to CIPA, and on 11 May I will be able to throw off the chains of office and dump them on him. Mr Davies and I update people about all the good stuff which is happening at CIPA. And then we all agree that it would be only proper to retire for drinks and canapés in recognition of the good stuff. Outside the lecture theatre, some friendly venue staff have set out three rows of glasses pre-primed with Edinburgh gin and bits of lime. Add ice and tonic, and there you are – everything you could ever want for at 5 pm on a Thursday. I drink six of these, because it seems a shame to waste alcohol that’s already starting to evaporate. I discover that Edinburgh gin is extremely tasty. I tell them not to bother with the tonic next time. |
Archives
July 2019
Categories |