4 February 2017
I am writing an article about IP Inclusive. For a magazine. It is a proper article, with a word count and everything. Once again I was roped into it after I'd had a vulnerability-and-tonic too many, which I guess will teach me to begin February with an alcoholic celebration of the end of Dry January. I exceed the word count within the first half hour. I am not unduly worried by this. Once I have removed the bits that don’t make sense, and the bits that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, and the menopausally monstrous ranting, I will be down to little more than 140 characters anyway and we can scrap the article and just tweet instead. President Trump gets away with it; I don’t see why I shouldn’t.
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1 February 2017, 6 pm
My problem with Council has been resolved. Because apparently, the exact same issue has been debated before, and an answer was reached which will allow me to do paid work for CIPA, so long as it is not basic Council work like turning up to meetings and reading the papers beforehand and adding punctuation to the draft minutes and stuff. The answer was first reached in 1996. It was reached again in 2011 because everybody had forgotten about reaching it in 1996. And most people had forgotten about the 2011 decision too, apart from one or two smart folk who told Mr Davies to look back through the archives and find the old Council minutes. If there is one sure way to spoil Mr Davies’s day, it is to ask him to look back through the archives of CIPA Council minutes. But luckily, thanks to the wonders of electronic document storage, he found the relevant papers and everything became clear again. This caused a certain amount of harrumphing, which is what some of our Council members do when they are denied an Argument with Andrea. I know full well that after the meeting, they will go down the pub together and harrumph in more specific terms until someone agrees to debate the issue again at next month’s meeting, just in case the decision taken today, and in 2011, and in 1996, is a rubbish decision after all. This is how all important meetings work. Agendas are compiled based on the volume of harrumphing that goes on during the seven days following the last meeting, together with the volume of whinging that goes on during the seven days before the next one. For the avoidance of doubt, you cannot get paid for Council-related harrumphing. By the time I leave CIPA, I have discussed the 2017 Congress; CIPA’s investment portfolio; the IP administrators’ course; the Benevolent Association’s annual accounts; the latest news about the UPC; CIPA’s relationships with other IP organisations, who are not as good as CIPA but nevertheless rudely continue to exist; our relationship with IPReg, which also rudely continues to exist except in much more friendly terms these days; and several important typos in the minutes of previous meetings. It has been such a hectic few hours, my new HRT patch curls up and falls off. They do not make HRT patches strong enough to cope with a whole day at CIPA. 1 February 2017, 5 am
I get up before the streetlamps come on and head to CIPA Towers for a day full of meetings. I have applied a new HRT patch and calmed down a bit since last week. Mr Davies still looks scared, though, on my arrival at the Congress Steering Committee meeting. When CIPA moves house – which it is going to have to do by the end of this year – Mr Davies is going to make sure no one tells me the new address. 1 February 2017, 2 pm I attend a meeting of the CIPA Benevolent Association. I was roped into being one of its trustees at the Past Presidents’ dinner last year, after I’d had a vulnerability-and-tonic too many. “It is not at all onerous,” they said. And a week later, Companies House wrote to remind me that I was personally responsible for the charity’s paperwork being in good order, on penalty of criminal sanctions. So today we are meeting to check that the paperwork is indeed in good order. There are only six of us, one of whom is Mr Davies anyway, and his paperwork is never in good order for anything. My own paperwork is only in good order because there is so far relatively little of it, other than the letter from Companies House and some brief accounts and activity reports. But I make a brave stab at appearing trustworthy and responsible, and this seems to satisfy the others. It does admirable work, the Benevolent Association. It has a pot of money from some generous donors, and out of this pot it provides assistance to CIPA members and their families who fall on hard times. Very few people know about this, and very few people need to. There are, I suspect, many CIPA members who cannot imagine how a patent attorney can ever fall on hard times. But then, these are not the people who have to hoover their own offices, empty their own bins, mend their own photocopiers, file their own tax returns, organise their own payroll, and plunder their own petty cash tins for a pint of milk on their way in to work. They are not the people whose petty cash tins contain just about enough for a pint of milk and a first class stamp to Newport, because they are not the people who have to chase their own clients through farmyards and caravan sites to get their £420 bills paid. There are other CIPA members for whom this quiet little charity has been the only thing keeping them from living on a caravan site themselves. Even with Companies House breathing down my neck, frankly, I am proud to be involved. 27 January 2017
Yay! We have enough donations to start work on the Careers in Ideas website! This means I have a load more emails to write as well as the load of events I am supposed to be organising and the load of arguing I still need to do with CIPA Council. We would have even more donations, except that there are still some people saying Hang on a minute, what about the paperwork? They are saying: You need to turn IP Inclusive into a proper registered company. Or a proper registered charity. I think they are worried that at the moment it is not a proper registered anything; it is just a collection of woolly ideas being manipulated from the inbox of an evil, ruthless but ultimately incompetent dictator, ie me. People have become understandably more sensitive about evil, ruthless and incompetent dictators since the Americans elected their 45th President. They say: Surely it cannot be that difficult to get yourselves registered and incorporated and such like, and to get a proper bank account into which we can pay our donations without risk or liability or any kind of Governance Problems? We do not like Governance Problems, they say. And IP Inclusive is just one big Governance Problem waiting to happen. But I do not agree with their assessment. IP Inclusive does not need to be a proper registered thing in itself. It just has to be a catalyst that brings people together to do Good Things in pursuit of a Common Cause. It needs to provide a banner under which people can meet and share and campaign for better stuff. IP Inclusive is an incentive for change, a conduit for dialogue about change, and a focal point for those who pursue change. It is neither a seed nor a growing plant, nor even the soil in which the seed germinates; it is the conditions that cause the germination: the light, the air, the water. We do not need to tie it down, only to run with it. And besides, being purely pragmatic about this, who exactly is going to rush forward to set up a limited company or a registered charity for us? Who is going to pay the lawyers and accountants, and ensure we have Articles of Association and file Annual Accounts? Show me the volunteers who are willing to be directors or trustees. Even I, passionate as I am about namby-pamby things like inclusivity and being nice to people, am not prepared to take on that kind of burden. Because I am basically too busy doing other stuff for IP Inclusive, like organising events and spreading ideas and bringing people together to help spread other ideas. And building a new website that will tell the whole wide world – yes, even the parts of it with different-coloured skin or unnatural sexual preferences – about careers in IP. I do not say any of this out loud, of course. I am too busy thinking about my argument with Council. This particular argument with Council is about me wanting to do some paid work for CIPA, because CIPA has work that needs doing and was going to pay other people to do it but actually I would be quite good at it and I am available and willing and also keen to earn a penny or two now I am no longer drafting claims for a living. And about Council saying it is Unnatural and Unallowable for a member of Council to get paid for doing stuff for CIPA, and if she does it then why don’t the rest of us get paid for turning up and arguing a lot, like I haven’t spent the last two years of my life working flat-out for CIPA in return for what is colloquially known as negative equity? I will not say this out loud, either. But I am quietly fuming. Perhaps it is time to apply a new HRT patch. Apparently they run out of hormones after a week and you are supposed to replace them before they do, otherwise you turn into a menopausal monster. And we cannot have the Immediate Past President of CIPA turning up to the next Council meeting in a menopausally monstrous mood just in time for the debate about whether she is allowed to earn money for it. No sir. 24 January 2017, evening
Next comes the Conference Dinner. This is being held at the top of a tall building, and we are encouraged to go out onto the roof terrace, in the snow, to look at the pretty lights of Zurich. It is still bone-slicingly cold and pilot-scaringly foggy, so we do not stay out for long. My fellow diners soon establish that my conversation is unmemorable, even if my English is the best on the table. They drink a lot of wine and eventually resort to talking between themselves in other languages. Now and then I throw in some authentically German-sounding verbal padding, so they think I am bilingual. Then I return to my hotel. It still smells of fondue. 25 January 2017 In the morning, after my dry bread and cheese breakfast, I listen to more speakers explaining what they do to bring IP to the uninitiated. One says that in order to make IP more sexy, we should encourage students to engage with patent databases like they do with Facebook® or Instagram®. I presume this means that students should spend half their lives glued to an Espacenet® app and be notified with silly noises every time a new patent application is filed. Personally I cannot see this working quite as well as being notified every time one of your friends gets wasted, or breaks up with their partner, or takes a photograph of a burger they are about to eat. During the morning sessions there are of course Questions from the Floor. As a result of the Questions from the Floor, we are half an hour late for lunch. What did I tell you? Lunch is meaty things and vegetable things, but also there is cheese, for those who were missing it. And then it is time for me to travel home. With the remainder of my Swiss francs, which is about a quarter of Not Much, I buy half a coffee and two biscuit crumbs at the airport. There are seven different chocolate shops in the departure lounge, none of which I can afford to visit, and a bit of a smell of cheese. On the plane I am served a cheese and dry bread sandwich. It is the perfect memento. And at least it is free. 24 January 2017, afternoon
The lack of Red Bull® is starting to get to me, but I grit my teeth and hang on in there. The corners of my conference notepaper fill with doodles, which doubtless say a lot about my personality not to mention my attention span. We hear from various other speakers about the challenges of getting IP awareness into universities when IP is basically not very sexy. Some of the speakers have found interesting ways to address these challenges; none of their ideas seem especially sexy but it is possible I am missing something. The most successful appear to revolve around making IP a compulsory part of the curriculum and attaching points to it, so that if you fail to learn about IP, you can only get half a degree. Meanwhile, tech transfer officers are bravely tackling teaching staff and research students, to explain that although they are Here to Help, there is only so much they can do if you have already published. Such advice goes down about as well as an unexpected tax bill the day after you have paid your holiday deposit. 24 January 2017, morning
The hotel serves me a Swiss breakfast. It is delicately sturdy chunks of cheese, robust salami and teutonically dry bread. The ambience is fondue. Jam is available from a tap but it is clearly only there as a sop to pathetic foreigners who cannot survive being snowed in without sucrose. I then set off to survive a whole day of conference without so much as a sip of Red Bull®. This is a First, and I am proud of myself. I also chair my panel discussion with great aplomb and several bits of German-sounding padding, and we reach some brilliant conclusions, for example that IP is not sexy enough for anyone in a university to pay it attention. Because my watch is fast, I manage to draw my panel session to a very early conclusion and dismiss everyone to a premature Swiss lunch of cheese, salami and dry bread. The organisers tell me off for this. They say: You should have used a Swiss watch. They say: You could have had more time for Questions from the Floor. I pretend to be apologetic, but actually I am not at all. Questions from the Floor too often turn out to be Speeches from the Floor. Putting a question mark at the end of a monologue is just not enough to make it worth spoiling people’s lunches for. Even if the lunch is yet another thinly-disguised mountain rescue pack. 23 January 2017
Bristol to Brussels to Zurich by plane, via at least three elegant-smelling but unnecessarily obstructive duty free shops, takes me most of the day. Still, I am luckier than people booked on the direct Heathrow to Zurich flight, which is delayed for several hours because of the fog. Apparently pilots are frightened of fog. On arrival, I discover that Zurich is (a) bone-slicingly cold, (b) pilot-scaringly foggy and (c) eye-poppingly expensive. It costs me almost as much to take a 15-minute taxi ride to my hotel than it did for my flights to and from Bristol. Being British, of course, I do not challenge the taxi driver. I give him an extra large tip to show him how unperturbed I am, and I do not cry until I am alone in my hotel room and realise I have scarcely enough Swiss francs left for a bottle of coke from the mini-bar. Once unpacked, I venture out into the Zurich streets, which are flanked by expensive boutiques and paved with gold. I go to an informal drinks reception that the EPO have kindly thrown for tomorrow’s conference speakers and panellists. My panellists are politely but firmly introduced to me and it is clear that we are supposed to be Friends. Brexit or not. My new Friends then begin a conversation in German. This is a ploy to avoid engaging with me. But I can do German. Well, a bit: usually the bit at the start of the sentence, because I lack the patience the verb eventually for to wait. But I am good at picking up on non-verbal cues such as laughter, the waving of a hand or the narrowing of an eye, and I am also good at inventing authentically German-sounding verbal padding to imply that I am following the narrative – sort of like the Gallic shrug, only with the noises emanating from deeper in the throat rather than half-way up the nasal passages. When I make these noises, people think I am genuinely bilingual. In this way I get by until the “finger food” arrives. This consists of delicately sturdy chunks of cheese, robust salami and teutonically dry bread – the type of fare that people survive on when they are stranded up a mountain all winter. You need access to a good finger buffet when you are stranded up a mountain. Back at the hotel, there is a strong smell of Swiss cheese everywhere. It seems the restaurant serves a lot of fondue. Which is another type of fare that people survive on when they are stranded up a mountain all winter. 17 January 2017, 6 pm
I talk to a group of schoolgirls about becoming a patent attorney. I tell them what a wonderful career I’ve had and all the bright, creative people I’ve worked with. I think it politic not to mention that some of the bright, creative people were also complete nutters, or that my wonderful career has culminated in my sitting at home answering emails for free. The girls diligently take notes. This is less because of any great interest in the subject and more because their teachers are watching them. And also because taking notes helps keep you awake. They are only here because the other two speakers were an epidemiologist and a professor of veterinary medicine. The epidemiologist talked about scary pandemics and showed clips from an exciting film about beautiful people dying. The veterinary professor showed pictures of cute fluffy kittens. Both of them told of their international travels in pursuit of biomedical clarity. Me, I spend my time reading bits of paper and I’ve been to Munich a lot. The girls all want to be vets and epidemiologists. They do not see the attraction of writing patent documents for a living and now and then visiting Munich for a hearing. The only time they perk up is when I tell them I once worked with products that, er, belonged on the shelves of an Ann Summers® shop. I think they are more surprised that I have heard of Ann Summers than they are that I drafted risqué patents. I look very old to them. Probably everyone looks old to them, but the vet and the epidemiologist don’t look like archaeological finds, and I do. 16 January 2017, 10.30 am
I attend a spooky meeting. No, really: let me explain. It is a meeting of the IP Administrators’ Committee. Along with several other committee members, I am attending by phone. And the phone decides that it would be fun to move the entire conference into a sort of virtual echo chamber. This imparts a séance-like quality to the meeting, as though people were speaking from another world. It is creepy. When we get to the item about the 2017 CIPA Congress, I am not sure if we will be using our organisational skills to plan it or our psychic skills to predict it. After a while, people get fed up with the echo. Much as many of us like the sounds of our own voices, we do not like them enough to hear them repeated back at us from The Other Side. Mr Mische is dispatched to set up a new teleconference, which is more suitable for use by the living. |
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