14 December 2015, 8.30 am
Once again we are writing to the EPO. We seem to be doing a lot of writing to the EPO at the moment. This time we are not writing to say Thank you for coming to visit us last week or Here are some good, solid, British ideas about the electronic Druckexemplar, or even We look forward to meeting your new Little Helpers at our next oral proceedings. No, sir. This time we are writing about the Boards of Appeal. It is well known que les Boards d'Appeal are due for restructuring. It is aussi well known que Monsieur Le President Battistelli has some plans and que Monsier Le Chat d’IP ne like pas those plans. Le Chat d’IP a written beaucoup about les plans du President et aussi about les plans que le Chat thinks le President might avoir up son sleeve. Aussi plus, il est well known que les Boards d’Appeal have un beaucoup big backlog de work et que something doit être done about it. Quelques people av written to Monsieur Le President pour lui expliquer ça. Alors, along vient le CIPA et c’est up to us to write la best lettre au President pour expliquer exactly comment les Brits think les Boards d’Appeal ought to être restructured. We know le President listens à CIPA parce que everyone listens à CIPA; nous sommes slap bang au centre de l’IP Universe. Et c’est moi qui va write cette lettre. Parce que moi, je write bien le français. Everyone says ça. Je vais include a reference aux Petits Helpers de l’EPO. Peut être ils sont comme les Petits Helpers de Santa. C’est très seasonal, non?
0 Comments
13 December 2015
I am safely ensconced in the Wess Curntry, and do not intend to visit the City of Gentlemen’s Clubs again until 2016. I might even unpack my suitcase – although the washing machine has just died, so there is little point. And should we manage to resurrect it, the person with first refusal is the son who has just returned home from university with a suitcase that you can smell coming. (He has also returned with a generous helping of student germs. He says he has caught these germs by not eating properly, something which he manages to make sound as though it was my fault, like I should have been there to remind him that wine is not one of your five a day just because it is made from grapes and that eggs are only nutritious if you take them out of their shells before you microwave them and otherwise are incendiary devices. Actually I think he caught these germs at least partly because he didn’t wash, and also because he hung around with other students, who didn’t wash either.) Today we are installing the Christmas tree. Unlike the CIPA one, which was decorated on the theme of Austerity, ours is decorated on the theme of Entropy. I use the term “decorated” loosely: it looks as though someone has climbed a step ladder and emptied the Christmas decorations box over it from above. The children say, Don’t worry Mum: we’ll put it right for you. 11 December 2015, 2 pm
Now I am at the grand ITMA Christmas lunch. As planned, I am wearing my navy blue, mid-life carrier bag. I am glad I ignored the ITMA President when he told me it was a fancy dress party: no one else is in fancy dress, apart from a few who have come as trade mark attorneys. We eat some rather posh food. I am particularly taken with the idea of only having four sprout leaves on my plate rather than a complete undivided sprout. This is an excellent way of addressing the Christmas Sprout Problem, much better than the usual ones such as Let’s Pretend Sprouts Are OK If You Put Them With Chestnuts. The ITMA President has to stay sober in order to make an after-lunch speech. Of course, I would not have bothered if I were in his shoes. But that is why we don’t have a grand CIPA Christmas lunch. The speech is very good. The President says a lot of it has been written by other people and the bits that haven’t, he has forgotten how to pronounce. He thanks several people for being there, including me, which is definitely a part of the speech that was written by someone else and probably by someone who has not met me. After the speech, the rather posh waiters come round asking the blokes whether they would like some further drinks. They do not ask me if I would like some further drinks. I presume this is because I am a woman rather than because I look as if I have already had too many further drinks. It is, in fact, a genuine “brandy and cigars” moment. I have just been told, in the subtlest possible way, that it is time for me to retire to the room with the piano and the needlework in, to talk about Mr Darcy with the trade mark attorneyettes. The age of chivalry is not yet dead, it seems. We are in a city that still harbours gentlemen’s clubs. I am so gobsmacked that all I can do is laugh. 11 December 2015, 11.30 am
I am having coffee with my counterpart at the Licensing Executives Society. We exchange notes about what it is like being a Presidentess of an organisation full of volunteers, some of whom were men at the time when being a man was all it took and everything else went without saying. It is an immensely comforting conversation. It turns out we both have the same problem with volunteers, ie that not all of them are Good Volunteers. For example, there are people who volunteer to be on committees and governing bodies but don’t appear to want to do anything except meetings. There are those who volunteer to be on such bodies and don’t even want to do meetings; the thrill of being on a list of members seems sufficient. There are those who volunteer to do things and then never quite get round to it, and those who do get round to it but you wish they hadn’t. And there are those who don’t volunteer to do things but are always happy to criticise someone who does. Not to mention the people who think that doing things is dangerous, full stop, and therefore devote themselves selflessly to the task of ensuring that the doing of things doesn’t happen: these people attend meetings solely to pick holes in proposals and refuse requests and generally to cast a cloud over anything that hasn’t first been documented, spell-checked, risk-assessed, independently verified and stuffed into spreadsheet cells. But we are Presidentesses and we are not easily cowed. We resolve that we will organise some joint training events. We will only tell the Good Volunteers about these events, until, that is, the events fall safely into the category of Things That Have Already Been Done, Sorry rather than Things We Would Like To Do Please. We decide that the joint training events can be about IP exploitation strategies, because all IP professionals should be able to take a strategic approach to the work they do. It is no good these days saying to your client: “Here is an exquisitely crafted patent application,” unless you can also answer the question “Yes but what will it be costing me in ten years’ time?” It is of course risky organising any kind of project with the word “strategy” in its title, so we will have to be careful who we let into our plans. 9 December 2015, 8 pm
6 months, 19 days, 20 hours. How am I getting on being President? Well, apart from the leadership side of things, which we’ve already established is little more than a fairy tale, and apart from nobody taking me seriously not even the President of ITMA, I think perhaps I am getting away with it. Over the last few months I have realised two things: (1) I am quite good at bluffing; and (2) so are a lot of other people. These two facts together have boosted my confidence no end. I now know that few people are as good as they appear to be but they will expect you to pretend they are and to pretend that you are too. And that way, everyone can be happy. I think perhaps there is a fifth way of defining leadership. It is by the ratio of the amount you bluff to the amount people can tell you’re bluffing. If this ratio is greater than 1, you are a leader. If it is greater than 2, you are a hero. If greater than 5, you are a superpower; greater than 10, a deity. And the closer to the upper echelons you get, the less likely you are to be revealed as a fraud by anyone else, because, frankly, we are all in it together. This is what I have learned through accidentally becoming the CIPA Pee, and it is a sobering thought. I pour another gin and tonic to un-sober it. 9 December 2015, 11 am
I meet up with an old friend, who is also a patent attorneyette. When I say “old”, I mean only that we both date back to the time when women were allowed to be patent attorneys but not supposed to be good at it. We talk about how lucky we are still to be young at heart and not to have succumbed to mid-life crises. In my case, of course, the only way I have avoided having a mid-life crisis is by calling it Voluntary Work instead. She has avoided it by finding a wonderful new boyfriend. I think she is better at this than me. She asks me how I am getting on being President. I say 6 months, 19 days, 11 hours. I do not tell her about the leadership book. When we are both tired of being young at heart, I go off to do some Christmas shopping. This is almost stressful enough to constitute a mid-life crisis in itself. I cannot find any suitable Christmas presents, so I buy a new dress instead. The dress is designed for someone who is young at heart but not at waist height. It is so bag-shaped that it attracts a 5p levy. It is, in other words, perfect for covering up the bits of me that are enjoying their own separate mid-life crises, in regions they are not strictly supposed to occupy, thanks to all the gin and chocolate I consume when I’m busy doing Voluntary Work. This dress, I think, will do nicely for the grand ITMA Christmas lunch on Friday. When I asked the ITMA President recently, he told me the dress code was fancy dress. But this is the same man who told me we could hold a Presidential Summit in a wine bar last week, so I am not sure whether he is serious. Either way, I will be attending dressed as a navy blue, mid-life carrier bag. 8 December 2015
I am reading a book about leadership. I am looking for tips on tyranny. The first thing the book says is that no one can agree on the definition of leadership. I take comfort from this, because presumably it means that no one can be sure whether you are a good leader or a bad leader, or indeed any kind of leader. So I may not get found out after all. Then the book describes four different ways you might define leadership, just in case you ever came across it. The first is that you might be a leader because of the position you are in. So, for example, if you tell someone they’re President, and give them a swimming gala medal and a ceremonial gavel and a badge that says “President”, then they are the President, and that’s that, even if they are also a bumbling numpty. The second is that you might be a leader because of the kind of person you are. Some people are just destined to become ruthless dictators. Some people are charismatic. Some people are bossy. Even if you make these people do the photocopying for you, in no time at all they will be project-managing an office move and telling you where not to put your files. The third way of defining a leader is by how they do things. Someone who shouts a lot is apparently not a leader, just a commander, although there may be little practical difference for those on the sharp end of the shouting. Someone who makes people follow the proper procedures and processes, so that everything comes out the way it did last time, is also not a leader, but a manager. You need managers because otherwise how would anyone become ISO 9000 compliant? A leader, in contrast, doesn’t tell people what to do but asks them what they think ought to be done and then invites them to do it and pretends it was his or her own idea all along. No one needs leaders in order to become ISO 9000 compliant. But they do need leaders for when the ideas other people came up with turn out to be useless. This third definition of leadership strikes a few chords with me, because I spend a lot of my time asking other people what I am supposed to be doing and then turning out to be useless at doing it. Perhaps I am a leader after all. The fourth definition of leadership looks at the results that the so-called leader has achieved. Thus if your company made tons of profit while you were supposed to be in charge, or your Chartered Institute achieved world domination while you were President, then you probably deserve to be called a leader. If on the other hand you have presided over a period of namby-pambiness, during which the only measurable successes have been to do with pantomime speeches and turning cufflinks into lapel pins, you probably deserve to be called That Person Who Hangs Around Here A Lot We Don’t Know What To Do With Her. Thinking about these four definitions, which actually makes my head hurt, I decide in the end that in most cases leadership probably comes about by accident. One day you turn round and there are lots of people behind you, and you don’t know how it happened and probably nor do they, but suddenly you are a leader. And this is largely because no one else wants to go in front and they are happy to hide behind someone who can take the blame next time something goes wrong. You cannot remember why it’s you at the front; possibly you were not concentrating at the time, or perhaps you had one gin and tonic too many, or perhaps you had naively thought it looked more fun up there. But when you turn round and look wide-eyed at people, they just say: Go on, you’ll be fine, keep going! Later they say: What did you do that for? I am glad I have this book. Now I understand much better what’s going wrong in my life. Not that it matters one jot, of course, because CIPA does not want a leader and in particular Council does not want a leader, more particularly it does not want the Pee to be its leader and most particularly it does not want me to be its leader. So I think it is clear that although I have a book about leadership, it should stay in the “fiction” section of my bookshelf. |
Archives
July 2019
Categories |