19 October 2015
I must pack for my grand trip to Washington. What to take, for four days’ worth of unpermitted meetings and conference? Eight cans of Red Bull®, 200 business cards and a posh frock for the evening do – because I am not going to make the jumper-and-boots mistake this time. Dollars, passport, travel adaptors, proper chocolate (to keep me company in my hotel room), proper gin (ditto), and something that looks a bit like an itinerary in case anybody asks where I’m going. Sadly, I have forgotten to bring the Presidential swimming gala medal home with me. This just keeps on happening. 20 October 2015, noon I am not one of those people who find foreign travel glamorous. Actually, I find it wearisome. You can do meetings anywhere, let’s face it: they are no great shakes either side of the Atlantic. I spent the first two hours of the morning convincing myself to set off at all. I was quite hard to convince. In view of my internal governance problems, it was tempting to jump ship there and then. But I figured this would leave several of my CIPA colleagues without entertainment for the trip, and that did not seem fair somehow. So I packed my case. I had already attempted the task twice the day before, but this time I managed to get it shut. Everything I had taken out of the case in order to achieve the shutting, I put into a grubby rucksack which I’m guessing puts the kybosh on my chances of an upgrade. They were never that high, it has to be said. The rucksack came with me on the Inca Trail: it is an old friend but not the type you would take to a dinner party. I drive to Bristol Parkway station. I take a train to Paddington, and another to Heathrow. So far so good. I go to check-in. At check-in I discover that things have changed since I last travelled to the US, and you now need to obtain something called an Esta before you are allowed to set off. I do not have an Esta. I have never had an Esta. Daniel at the check-in desk finds this disappointing. I have dollars, and travel adaptors, and chocolate and gin. I have something that looks a bit like an itinerary. I even have my posh frock, I say. Daniel remains unconvinced that this will be sufficient to get me into the United States of God Bless America. I look suitably pathetic and Daniel is moved to help me. He gallantly boots up his tablet, logs on to the website where you have to go to get an Esta, and allows me to apply for one there and then, using his tablet, while he waits patiently to be able to print me a boarding card. I am so going to write to BA about Daniel when my ordeal, I mean trip, is over, to nominate him for a Customer Service Award. I may even nominate him for a CIPA award. God Bless Daniel! Armed with my boarding pass and official authority to enter into the United States, if not from CIPA’s Internal Governance Committee then at least from US Customs (which is what counts right now), I begin my journey through Heathrow Airport. This involves a lot of walking, some lifts, some escalators and a shuttle train that I might find quite exciting if I were with the kids, but I am not so I don’t. It seems to me that the shuttle train is a neat way of disguising the fact that although my ticket says Heathrow I am actually flying from somewhere nowhere near Heathrow at all. Like Gatwick. At the gate, I suffer the indignity of being told to remain seated while the important people are ushered onto the plane in time to get wasted on pre-flight champagne. There is nothing like an airline boarding system to make you realise your status in the world. I am, of course, travelling Pleb Class, to avoid spending undue amounts of CIPA members’ money in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures such as those involved in travelling from deepest Zummerzet to Washington DC via Heathrow Terminal 5. My status in the world is only marginally higher than a crate full of globe-trotting guinea pigs.
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16 October 2015, 7 pm
My flight home to Brizzle leaves from Terminal 2 of Munich Airport. Terminal 2 is like Terminal 1 only without the helpful signposts. You can walk for miles in Terminal 2 before finding anything that’s remotely useful to someone who just wants to fly somewhere, like a bag drop desk or a flight gate for instance. Before Security (which I stumble upon by accident), I dutifully ditch my water bottle and Red Bull®. On the other side, the only things I can find to drink are alcohol and perfume. 17 October 2015 I am tired. So tired. I need my mum to write me another of those letters only this time it needs to say Andrea cannot be the CIPA President this week because she is losing the will to live. Also she is poorly from drinking too much alcohol (or was it perfume?) at Terminal 2 and eating too much meat and dumplings and pretzels. You know you’ve reached a low ebb when you can’t even open an iTunes® playlist without going to pieces. The family give me a wide berth. 18 October 2015 Even though it is Sunday, I spend all day dealing with emails. Mainly the emails are about organising meetings and travel plans and seminars. There are many types of meetings: round-table; breakfast; formal; informal; plenary. They sound like different types of biscuit. I do not have permission for any of them. 16 October 2015, 10 am
The CIPA delegation, still digesting last night’s dinner, trundles off to meet with some people from the EPO Academy. We are in a hearing room. This immediately makes me feel ill-at-ease. It does not seem right, somehow, to be holding friendly discussions over coffee and pretzels in a room where thousands of patent attorneys have met their doom under Article 123. We talk about my course on oral proceedings, and about e-learning, and about all manner of opportunities for CIPA and the EPO Academy to work together to educate EPAs in the UK. Then, still digesting our pretzels, we meet with some high-ranking EPO officials to talk about Things the UK Profession Would Like to Change. We have been told what to say by the CIPA Patents Committee. The EPO are largely unimpressed. No, they cannot give us any more legal certainty over the e-Drex. No, they cannot update the Guidelines to flag which bits are likely to change because of new case law. And no, despite the shortage of native English examiners, they are not prepared to recruit people who are too lazy to learn any other languages. OK, so perhaps that last question was a little bit tactless. We have just about finished with our pretzels in time for lunch with HRH The President Himself, Monsieur Battistelli. It is a super lunch, and fortunately not too Bavarian. The President graciously talks his way through it so as to leave us free to enjoy our food. Now and then I make little noises of agreement, because I am also a President, but I do not think my input is particularly valuable and on this at least I believe I have President Battistelli’s full support. He tells us his plans. They sound entirely reasonable. In fact, I have a lot of sympathy with this man because he too is trying to be a ruthless dictator and being thwarted at every turn by people who just don’t understand how hard it is to ruthlessly dictate and who want him to be accountable and stuff. He is taking what I think is called a robust stance in response to his critics. He is not getting permission for anything, no sir. I wish I could be a Proper President like that. 15 October 2015
Last night I dreamt I was the CIPA President, and wherever I went, Ghanaian servants with shimmering pecs would twirl parasols over my head. And then I woke up. It turns out that only the first part of the dream was true. There are no Ghanaian servants to be seen and it is time to hoover the flat and wash the bedding and empty the bins. Then I am off to Munich for a day or two. I am so excited by my first trip on the Heathrow Express® and my first visit to Terminal 5 that I leave my passport and boarding card at Security. This is not a good start. In Munich, I meet with the VeePee and the EyePeePee and Mr Davies and Mr Roberts, and we all catch the S-Bahn to our hotel. Mr Davies is in charge of buying the tickets, but luckily we don’t get found out. In the evening we meet up with some epi folk. They take us for a traditional Bavarian meal. Bavarian food is like normal food but on steroids. Whole animals have been sacrificed for the side orders alone. I am served a dumpling that must have been cooked in a cauldron. During the meal, Mr Davies practises his German, which he learnt from watching It’s A Knockout. “Links, links, gerade aus, links, rechts!” he shouts. As a result, it takes me twenty minutes to find the ladies’ loo. During this twenty minutes, another half a pig arrives by way of an amuse-bouche, which in German translates as Ein Mundlachenmachenvorspeiseereignis and is, therefore, a bit of a mouthful in all senses of the word. 14 October 2015, 7 pm
The women inventors’ and innovators’ event culminates in a dinner at the British Library. On arrival, I realise I have got the dress code wrong. The others are in posh gowns and dripping with jewels. I am in a jumper (because it is cold) and boots (because I walked there). The only redeeming feature of the jumper and boots is that they are black. But when I stand up on the stage at the end of the evening, to present the awards to the bestest of the female inventors and innovators, I do feel ever so slightly under-dressed. To make matters worse, the guests include Ghanaian royalty. The Ghanaian royalty consists of a King and Queen, several princes and princesses and courtiers, and a rather good-looking servant. The servant’s job is to stand all evening holding a parasol over the Queen. To protect her from falling library books, presumably. He has shimmering pectoral muscles that are only partly covered by his shimmering robe. Not that I am distracted by this, you understand. The royals are also wearing shimmering robes, and the colours are heart-thumpingly vivid, but it is the guy with the pecs and the parasol who gets most of the attention. 14 October 2015, 10 am
I attend a conference of women inventors and innovators. I give them an inspiring talk about the differences between men’s and women’s behaviour and about women reclaiming their share of the floorspace and the airspace and having the courage to be themselves. Unfortunately, when I was planning my speech I did not realise there would be men in the room too. So I have to cut short my pantomime sketch about what happens when a bloke sits next to a woman on a crowded train. I have been to various Women in IP events, and often they are quite macho affairs. Often they involve women demonstrating to one another that they are as good as men, which they do by being much like men except a bit better dressed. Today’s event is different. It is, in the nicest possible way, very feminine and very maternal. There is frequent and warm applause. Mention that you’ve published a paper or set up a company or sold a product or two, and everyone cheers. Mention that you have a partner or children and everyone cheers. Even mentioning that you are the CIPA President causes a polite ripple of appreciation, although in a rather confused kind of way because not everyone in the audience has heard of CIPA and those that have are struggling to believe that its President does pantomime sketches. The schedule is a little on the erratic side, which means that no one knows exactly who is meant to be speaking when, or on what subject, or for how long. But it hardly seems to matter. CIPA Hall is full and buzzing and very, very warm. The lunch we’ve provided is devoured with the same gusto as the applause was offered. In the afternoon, there is a special session in a back room where delegates can speak with the CIPA President, ie me. I am supposed to be giving them insight, inspiration and words of wisdom. But the women who come to see me have done amazing things and invented stuff and turned it into marketable products that are changing the world. I think it unlikely I will have much to offer them. Those that have already come across IP don’t regard it that highly anyway: they think that if the IP system had been set up by women, it wouldn’t be all about keeping things to yourself, it would be about publishing and sharing and swapping ideas. Actually I suspect that if women had been put in charge of setting up an IP system, they would have scrapped the idea completely and done something useful instead. Which would not be much good for me, since IP is the only thing I am even remotely qualified to do. 13 October 2015, 3 pm
I am on my second teleconference of the day. This morning it was a meeting of the Trade Marks Committee. This afternoon it is the Internal Governance Committee, or IGC for short. The battery in my phone is struggling; normally the longest it has to stay awake is for 50 minutes when my mother calls, and to be honest I’m usually relieved if it can’t. The IGC meeting is a serious one. One of the functions of the IGC is to make sure the Officers behave responsibly. You can never be sure, after all, that when a humble patent attorney accedes to such a position of power it won’t go to their heads. You can never be sure that a bumbling numpty from Zummerzet isn’t going to turn into a ruthless dictator while your back’s turned. The IGC usually discharges this most vital of its duties by not asking what the Officers are doing and being glad they are getting on with it quietly. But when someone makes a complaint, the IGC must spring into action. And as we established last week, a Complaint has been made because Permissions have not been sought. There is an implication that I am untrustworthy. Well of course I am untrustworthy. Everyone knows that. Someone who writes a diary like mine, and makes it available for public inspection, should not be trusted with so much as a paper clip, let alone an entire presidency. It is terrifying that I am in this job at all. For everyone concerned. The complainant also thinks that I should not need to take other CIPA Officers on foreign trips with me, for moral support. The complainant says: When you were voted in as President the electorate would have expected you to be able to do these things by yourself. I say I doubt it. I say the electorate knew they were electing a bumbling numpty but they thought it might brighten things up a bit. And anyway, the EyePeePee is not coming with me for moral support; she is coming with me so as to fill in the blanks in my sentences with things that sound vaguely related to IP. She is also going to advise me what to wear, and when not to have another gin and tonic, which is important stuff when you think that it’s CIPA’s global reputation that’s at stake. So there! I think the IGC is convinced. But I am not 100% sure. 12 October 2015
I chat on the phone to a member of our diversity task force (da-da-da-DA!!). We are plotting a grand event to launch the diversity charter and some diversity training and some diversity support groups. We have not got permission for any of these things either. Fortunately, my co-conspirator has organised for us to borrow a meeting room free of charge, and also for us to borrow some drinks and nibbles after the main part of the meeting, and he is going to organise a seminar on unconscious bias as well. Not that anyone in the patent profession suffers from unconscious bias, obviously, as I have been told many times by many people, usually the ones who have not noticed I don’t wear cufflinks. I have also organised for some IPO speakers to kick-start the event. I am wondering whether we should cut a ribbon or unveil a plaque or smash a bottle of champagne against a wall or something, but I can’t face getting permission for such ceremonial complexities. Also I suspect the bottle-smashing idea might not appeal to the people who are lending us the meeting room and the nibbles. We plan to broadcast live from the borrowed meeting room, using borrowed video equipment. What could possibly go wrong? |
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