25 September 2015
Today I am being Regal and Statesmanlike for a visiting delegation of Korean attorneys. Apparently it is important that our visitors meet the President herself, even if the President herself is covered in straw. I excel myself. I smile graciously and shake hands and nod my head and collect business cards, and I am careful to read the business cards before slipping them into my pockets with the straw. Every now and then, I make little speeches thanking everyone for being so lovely. I accept some beautiful Korean gifts and nod some more and I have my photo taken holding the gifts and smiling from ear to ear. Mr Lampert tweets the pictures. In return, we give the Korean visitors a CIPA pen each. The CIPA pens are a little old and the ink has dried out inside them. This may not be classy, but it is at least fully compliant with the Bribery Act 2010. We also give the Koreans breakfast pastries, mid-morning biscuits, a thumping good buffet lunch and some evening drinks and canapés. In between the eating and the present opening, we tell them about IP in Europe, and they tell us about IP in Korea, which is getting more like IP in Europe all the time, except more efficient. Tomorrow they are going to visit the French patent attorneys. And after that, the German patent attorneys. So I am glad they have CIPA pens to remind them who is best in Europe. There are quite a few women in the Korean delegation. They are worried about what we have done with the women in CIPA. To be honest, so am I. But the diversity task force (da-da-da-DA!!) will sort that out.
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24 September 2015
I attend my day job for the last time before officially retiring. The official retirement will differ from the past six months only in that I no longer turn up at the office once a week to contribute nothing, but instead contribute nothing from the comfort of my own home. To mark the occasion, my colleagues take me for lunch and shower me with gifts. There are balloons and flowers and speeches, and it is all very emotional. They have put together an album of memories and thoughts about how bizarre it has been to work with me over the years. They manage to make it sound like a privilege. I clear out the clutter from my desk. Among the fifteen years’ worth of staples, treasury tags, correction pens, Post-It® notes, paper clips and biscuit crumbs, I find photos charting fifteen years’ worth of my family growing up. During this time, I have remained strategically behind the camera lens, so as not to chart the visual impact on a mother of a family growing up around her. It is a strange feeling, to have been somewhere so long that they remember you having a baby, and now you struggle to remember the baby’s name, and anyway it is not a baby any more but apparently needs a lift to university. In my defence, one of the babies has since changed both its name and its gender, making it doubly difficult for me to keep track of my offspring. Wearied by all the tidying-up, to which I am unaccustomed, I open a second can of Red Bull®. These days, it seems, I lurch between two extremes. The first is hyper-alert and anxious. The second is asleep. There is no middle ground. It is sometimes tricky to decide which of the two works best in a meeting, which then makes it tricky to decide whether to break open the third can of Red Bull or not. Mostly, I decide that sleep is the better option. They can always wake me up if something important needs discussing. Or better still, after they have finished discussing it. 22 September 2015
This morning another of our rubbish committees meets to waste time talking about non-issues. This one is the Regulatory Affairs Committee. It used to be called the Regulatory Responses Committee, but then we decided we were fed up of always responding to regulatory problems after they’d bitten us on the backside, and that it was time we took the regulatory initiative and saw the problems coming and did something about them before they arrived. We spend the first hour talking about how to respond to a letter from IPReg on Important Regulatory Business, which has indeed bitten us on the backside. We agree that I will write the response. Then we agree that Mr Davies will write us a regulatory manifesto, that is Proactive and Assertive and not Responsive at all. And I think: how is this fair?? How come he gets all the fun things to write? But I do not say so out loud. 23 September 2015 I write up my notes from Monday’s meeting. The others say: You cannot write that. Then I draft the letter on Important Regulatory Business. The others say: You cannot write that either. (Though I’m sure that’s what they told me to write yesterday.) Finally I write a speech to welcome a new High Court judge, because that is apparently what the CIPA President has to do and no one was able to think quickly enough to avert this potential disaster. This time I am not going to show my writing to anyone; I am just going to go out there and say it. So there! A leader needs to be bold now and then, I feel. 18 September 2015
Today I am not in London. But there is a meeting of the Professional Standards Working Group and I have to dial in to it because professional standards is something I am interested in. It is a useful meeting because it is chaired by a professional professional standards writer (as opposed to an amateur professional standards writer or a professional amateur standards writer). She knows all about these things and she is going to write CIPA a set of professional standards that other standardised professionals would die for. After an hour or so of really productive discussions, the people in London decide it is time to have lunch. They suggest that the people on the phone should take a break and we should all reconvene later. But I continue to listen to them eating lunch, because it is fun trying to guess what people are chewing based solely on their auditory output. It sounds to me like some of our existing standards could do with improvement. 21 September 2015, 12 noon We have invited some senior attorneys from private practice firms to talk to us about what’s happening in their world – apart from making shedfuls of money – and what CIPA can do to make it better. They tell us CIPA should be doing stuff to promote the UK profession abroad. They say The German Kammer has a roadshow that it takes round countries like China so no one is in any doubt about who is best in Europe. They say CIPA should do a roadshow. I think: in your dreams. They also tell us we must do something about Brexit. I say We are not allowed to talk about Brexit because Mr Davies thinks it is an ugly word. Plus we don’t believe CIPA really has much influence in such spheres. But they think we should try, nonetheless. And they also think we should do something about commoditisation. It is flattering to be considered so powerful, but really, we’re still working on our Strategic Plan; I’m not sure we can overturn market forces as well. On the plus side, they tell us they like the Journal. On the minus side, one of them thinks it looks like Playboy®. Or perhaps this was also intended as a plus. I have to say I had never previously been struck by the similarities between the CIPA Journal and Playboy and, no, I am still not seeing them. Hey-ho. Something else to consider in the context of professional standards. Then they tell us that our committee structure is rubbish, and anyway the committees waste a lot of time talking about non-issues. Most of them don’t go to committee meetings, so I’m not sure how they know this: word must have got out somehow. They also say that Congress is not particularly good. But most of them don’t go to Congress either. I am beginning to wish we’d never invited them. 21 September 2015, 2.30 pm A few of us get together to talk about the AIPLA Annual Meeting in Washington. The EyePeePee and I are going to this meeting to represent CIPA. This is quite exciting. Washington is a long way away; you cannot get there by track’ur and that in itself makes it the highlight of my year so far. There will be other CIPA members there too, and we are going to try to meet with lots of important people so as to spread the word about who is best in Europe. It is, in fact, almost a roadshow. There appear to be several social events attached to the AIPLA Annual Meeting and it is becoming clear that I may need to purchase new frocks for the occasion. Not having to travel by track’ur means I can feasibly widen my repertoire to include Things That Look Quite Pretty, without having to worry about pockets for the straw and stain-proof outer layers. So there's a chance I can raise our professional standards after all. |
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