18 November 2016
The first surprise I have when I wake this morning is that there really is a rainbow unicorn bath duck on my desk. So it was not the Prosecco having a laugh. It was Mr Smyth having a laugh. The second surprise is when I open an email from the EPO, about a conference they are holding where I agreed to be a panellist. Attached to the email is a draft programme, which the organisers tell me they are sure I will be happy with. It is generally bad news when someone sends you an attachment they are sure you will be happy with. It means you may or may not be happy with it – probably not, in fact – but they have no intention of changing it. My misgivings are confirmed when I see in the draft programme that I am not just a regular sit-still-and-answer-the-odd-question panellist. No sir. I am a moderator. Eek!! The EPO have clearly been misinformed. There is nothing moderate about me. Nor am I good at bringing out the moderate side in other people. I fear for the success of this event.
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17 November 2016, 6 pm
It is the launch of "IP Out". This is the support group for LGBTQAXYZ+ people in the IP professions. The LGBT bit stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. The other letters are there to confuse people. And this works very well, because even the LGBT folk don’t really know what the other letters mean any more, other than that if you have more letters, you are bound to get more people coming to your parties. There are certainly plenty at this party. There is also Prosecco and some dainty nibbly bits. And there are neon lights too. Wait, no, that’s Mr Smyth’s waistcoat. Darn! Resplendent in magentas and fuchsias and various rich shades of purple, with similarly vibrant matching accessories such as pocket handkerchiefs, lapel pins and even socks, Mr Smyth has quite clearly won the sartorial challenge hands down. Even in my rainbow-coloured frock with its Concealed Waistline, even when I don my pink feather boa half-way through my introductory speech, Mr Smyth’s waistcoat still manages to upstage me. As I say to the audience, that’s gays for you. I could not have said this in a room full of straight people. But the LGBTQAXYZ+ people laugh merrily. They have had plenty of Prosecco. IP Out stages a panel discussion about how “out” you can be in the workplace. Clearly the answer depends on your workplace. If there is an oak-panelled library in your workplace, and the senior partner arrives in a bowler hat and pin-stripes, takes a three-hour lunch at his club and returns, reeking of port and cigars, to ask his secretary to sit on his knee for a while, it is probably not wise to be “out”. But in most places, it is OK. Apparently it is not even illegal to be gay these days. Which makes it less exciting, but is clearly desirable if you’ve chosen to work in the law. Today’s homosexuals are pretty normal people. Our panellists all look normal too. You would never guess they were actually weird and unnatural deviants bent on polluting our children’s minds and undermining the noble institution of marriage. Not that the noble institution of marriage needs external forces to undermine it, being perfectly capable of undermining itself and in any case built on a dubious bedrock of possession and subjugation and therefore in many ways analogous to slavery. But I digress. The pretty normal panellists tell us their experiences about being “out” in the workplace, and we all agree that if a colleague or a client has a problem with you being “out” then they are not worthy of the time of day anyway, although you must be careful if they are the one signing off your Christmas bonus. We agree that it is better, in fact, to be as openly “out” as possible, so that no one needs to pussyfoot around pretending they don’t know, or pretending that you don’t know that they know, or indeed genuinely not knowing and then making some dreadful alcohol-fuelled faux pas. I would venture to suggest, however, that being as openly “out” as possible does not necessarily require you to wear a neon-pink waistcoat with matching socks wherever you go. This is more an expression of Mr Smyth’s personality than of his sexuality. Another expression of Mr Smyth’s personality is that he is handing out rainbow unicorn LGBTQAXYZ+ bath ducks. If you cannot picture a duck with a unicorn’s horn and a rainbow-coloured mane, you are just not trying hard enough. Or you have not had sufficient Prosecco. 16 November 2016
Over the last few days I have held more telecons. I love the word “telecon”. It makes your family think you are doing something important with the phone rather than just chatting to your friends. It absolves you from domestic chores. And it prevents your mum from ringing. (My spell-checker, however, does not like telecons. It autocorrects them to “telecoms”. I resemt the inplicatiom that I cammot tell my n’s fron my m’s.) Today’s telecons are with the panellists taking part in our IP Inclusive party. The panel discussion is going to be about ethnic diversity. There is not much of this in IP at the moment, so I have had to work hard to source panellists with appropriate genetic profiles. Now I am trying to find out all about them so I know what questions to ask when I chair the panel discussion. It would be embarrassing if I asked them stupid things like their favourite TV programme or how long they spend on their makeup. So I ask each of them what challenges they’ve had to overcome in order to be ethnically diverse in an ethnically fairly not-diverse profession. And they all say: Well, actually, it’s been fine; everyone’s been really nice to me. I ask how difficult it was getting a job or getting promoted. They say: Well, you know, that was quite easy too. I ask if they feel uncomfortable having so few ethnically diverse role models around. They say: Not really; people are very supportive. This rather takes the wind out of my sails. I am wondering quite why minority ethnic groups are so under-represented in the IP professions when it is all so easy for them. I am thinking there must be more to this than meets the eye. I need to drill down to smoke out the bottom line going forward. So I ask: What’s your favourite TV programme? 8 November 2016
I hold telecons with a number of people about the IP Inclusive event I am organising for later this month. Which we have to call a party. Because it is. It is to celebrate a whole year of having a diversity Charter and lots of people signing up to it and everyone waiting for everyone else – particularly me – to do something about it. What I have done is to organise an event at which the Charter signatories can hear about what we have all been waiting for and what we are going to wait for next. And in the meantime they can swap ideas about how to be good at diversity and other namby-pamby stuff. This may seem an ineffectual way of tackling the problem, but it is better than not tackling the problem at all. Also today I hold a telecon with someone from the IPO, in which I have to break the news that I am no longer up for doing shedfuls of work for free because my family have told me to get a Proper Job and start paying my way again. I did a lot for CIPA for free last year, I explain, and CIPA just told me off for doing it wrong, so now I must find some gainful employment that I am Properly Qualified to do. So I cannot really do that whole project thing we talked about before, not unless someone is going to pay me to do it. I pause for a second or two. But the man from the IPO fails to grasp the obvious opportunity this presents him with. Instead he says that he and his colleagues will do the project on their own based on the evil plans I drew up for free, and then maybe run it past me for a sanity check going forward into the long grass. I am happy with this. It means nothing and we both know it. The aim of the project was to educate business folk about what IP attorneys do, how they charge for it and how to get the best out of working with them, other than by not working with them at all and going it alone. Going it alone in IP is extremely tricky. It makes a conversation with a patent attorney, taxing though that might be, seem like a walk in the park. But the idea of someone running a completed project – or indeed a completed anything – past me for a “sanity check” is about as insane as you can get. I am not going to hold my breath. 5 November 2016
Today I have been mostly dressmaking. The object of my dressmaking was a rainbow-coloured frock, which is my costume for the launch of our LGBTQ+ network, IP Out. Everybody knows that LGBTQ+ people like bright colours and costumes and ostrich feathers and things. Also a certain Mr Darren Smyth will be at the launch, and Mr Smyth is renowned for commissioning London tailors to explore parts of the electromagnetic spectrum which are not normally put to sartorial use, and to turn them into waistcoats. Therefore the dress code for the evening is likely to be Flamboyantly Competitive, and I am determined to hold my own. Of course, I am using the term “dressmaking” somewhat loosely. What actually happened is this. The dress arrived in the post, looking lovely but ever so slightly half a metre too long. It had clearly been designed for a model who had been seriously Photoshopped. I have never been Photoshopped in my life. Having looked long and hard at the extra half metre of fabric, in light of my extensive dressmaking experience, and weighed up the available options, few as they were, I decided the best course of action was to double everything up in the middle, thus creating what is known in the art as a Concealed Waistline. I was very pleased with myself for thinking of this, because a waistline is always better concealed, especially when you reach your Middle Ages. I achieved this complex architectural change with the aid of four large safety pins. I did not even have to thread a needle. Result! They are of course Concealed Safety Pins. So Mr Smyth had better up his game. If I can find a feather boa from my amateur dramatics days, my triumph will be guaranteed. Mwa ha ha! 2 November 2016, 9 pm
I am on a late train home, eating my plastic pot of accurately chopped fruit. I feel most encouraged by the fantastic Women in IP launch, but also most fatigued because I am out of practice doing long days in London. While I am staring out of the window, pretending to look intelligent, my thoughts turn again to the themes of networking and mentoring. Of course I learnt a lot from the proper women panellists, but I have also been around long enough to have a few thoughts of my own. For example, these are my top tips on networking: 2 November 2016, 4.30 pm
I head off for the grand launch of the IP Inclusive Women in IP network. Although the idea of a bespoke Women in IP group can be a little controversial, for example among the Men in IP, a packed room and a sudden need for additional chairs suggest that it does in fact meet a demand. I address the packed room feeling very proud. As the person apparently responsible for this whole IP Inclusive business, which I have of course not done Properly or with Dignity but which nevertheless appears to be steam-rollering forward, it falls to me to say a few words of support. They are very enthusiastic words. I have not lost my touch on the old speech-making front, no sir. There then follows a panel discussion on the subjects of networking and mentoring. Some proper Women in IP, by which I mean they appear to be proper women and also to have proper IP jobs of their own as opposed to just stirring up trouble in other people’s, tell their stories and proffer advice. They manage to do this without interrupting or talking over one another, which takes some getting used to in the context of an IP event. They invite questions from the floor. Ooh, ooh, I say, putting down my Red Bull® for a moment and waving my hand excitedly at the proper women panellists. I have a question! The proper women roll their eyes. What do you do, I say, when someone you’re trying to network with spends all their time looking over your left shoulder to see if there’s anyone more interesting to talk to? There is a pause, and then the proper women suggest, tactfully of course, that perhaps I’m just not very interesting. Someone else from the audience asks what to do about the bloke who gives you his business card and then asks you out for an intimate lunch à deux. Apparently the correct way to deal with this is to decline the invitation politely, and not – as I had previously thought – to rip up the business card in the bloke’s face and place it, with the aid of a well-aimed punch, in his nether regions. It is good to know this. No wonder I am not very good at networking. One of the other proper women panellists reads us a poem she once wrote about the horrors of networking. This is my kind of woman. The poem includes all those difficult moments like trying to insinuate yourself into a conversation from the side-lines, and trying to insinuate your canapé into your mouth without engendering its structural collapse, and trying to insinuate your business card out of your bag when your fingers are greasy with collapsed canapé and there’s nowhere to put your glass of fortification, ie alcohol. I have never been able to cope with any of this. I would rather starve to death than try to eat canapés with a potential new business acquaintance. As for the thing about insinuating yourself into conversations, the panellists are agreed that the only way to do this is to wait patiently on the edge of the group, until sooner or later they take pity on you and offer to mop up your collapsed canapé. This sounds a most civilised approach. But I don’t think all the Men in IP have heard of it yet. In the past I have waited patiently on the edge of a conversation, only to be handed an empty glass and asked for a refill. So I have given up the patient waiting and resorted to the well-aimed punches instead, and these are guaranteed to get you into any conversation, no matter how macho. 2 November 2016, 2 pm
My action-packed First Day Back continues with the November Council meeting. These meetings are better done by phone than in person, because it is a messy business assembling 26 patent attorneys round a table. In fact, it is a messy business assembling patent attorneys full stop. The new Pee has changed the rules for Council meetings. The rule now is that Council members turn up. So we have a packed CIPA Hall. This wasn’t the case when I was Pee: people didn’t need to turn up because they could read about what had happened in the Not-so-Secret Diary afterwards. And nothing much happened anyway because I was an Ineffectual Pee on account of spending most of my time fending off complaints. I can only put in an hour and a half at Council before I dash off to my next Important Engagement busy busy. An hour and a half is however plenty long enough. The Pee and the Chief Eggsek manage to spin out the agenda so that nothing important has to be dealt with until after I’m gone. This saves them having to do the important stuff in charades, like they do when I’m taking part in Council meetings by phone, or through post-meeting retrospective analyses, like they do in the minutes. 2 November 2016, 12.30 pm
Now it is time for the monthly officers’ lunch. These meetings are better done in person than by phone because it is a messy business assembling your lunch round a telephone. So it is nice to be here, back with my old officer friends and a new selection of sandwich fillings. The EyeEyePeePee and I spend many happy moments trying to decipher said sandwich fillings. One of them might be falafel. Equally, it might be pork stuffing. The distinction is important because the EyeEyePeePee does not eat meat. Not even for CIPA. The others bring me up to speed with what’s been going on over the summer and how efficiently CIPA has been running without me. The Pee says it seems strange, having me around again. I say Get used to it. And instantly start asking awkward questions about the things that have not been going on because I was the only person who cared enough to do them. Not much has changed really, says the Pee, who doesn’t want to admit that his inbox is still full and still detailed but that it is no longer my fault. I tell him that he has certainly got more grumpy since I was last here, since in the last half hour alone I have witnessed him ranting about at least three different outrageous groups of not-CIPA people. The others try not to smirk and the EyeEyePeePee reaches for another hopefully-falafel sandwich. I can tell that Mr Davies and the others are delighted and ecstatic to see me again. These are also literary devices as defined in the preceding claim, and nothing whatsoever to do with the truth, which is that people are about as delighted to see me as I was to launch myself into the November dawn in pursuit of a smelly train carriage. 2 November 2016, 11 am
Straight after the meeting of the Congress Steering Committee, there is one for the Internal Governance Committee. Our job is to think what to do about exams and courses which are not making as much money as we’d hoped. In fact they are making negative amounts of money. Mr Davies does not like negative amounts of money, and neither does the Internal Governance Committee. Negative amounts of money are not polite. The litigation skills course is being particularly impolite. Apparently there are not enough CIPA members who want litigation skills so badly that they are prepared to pay to undergo extensive study and examination ordeals. This in turn has something to do with the fact that failing to do a litigation skills course does not actually seem to result in any sanction, other than the terrible ignominy of being litigationally unskilled. Not everyone wants to shell out large amounts of money to be trained in a skill they don’t intend to exercise, absent a sufficiently catastrophic alternative such as for instance being banned from drafting pernickety documents for a living. |
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