1 July 2015, 9 pm
Though a little concerned about my dignity and good standing now that I am Pee, I persuade myself to attend the CIPA Battle of the Bands. I am quite difficult to persuade, because it is a hot summer evening and I am weary from all the meetings, but I become more biddable when I tell myself there will be drinks on offer. First I have to get my wrist stamped, like a teenager going to a festival. This is not dignified. Then I have to enter a very dark and very, very noisy place, which means I have to shout even louder than I did in the Council meeting. This is also not dignified. Then I have to drink many gin and tonics. This is not dignified either, and nor does it help with the good standing, or indeed any other kind of standing. Once I reach the point when standing becomes a bit of an issue, and the choice is either to sit on the floor or get up and dance, for some reason I decide to get up and dance. This is incredibly not dignified. I have to say the bands are very good. They even play some tunes I have heard of. There is a famous DJ there too, apparently, although I have not heard of him before. He is a mate of Unlucky Gary’s. By the end of the evening he is a mate of quite a few other CIPA people. At one point he introduces me to the crowd, so that everyone knows that the CIPA President is the one doing the incredibly not dignified dancing. At the end, one of the bands wins. It hardly matters. I have had the time of my life. I am quite difficult to persuade to go home.
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1 July 2015, 2.30 pm
There has been a run of meetings. Yesterday it was the International Liaison Committee. Today it is the Congress Steering Committee, followed by the Internal Governance Committee, followed by Council. By the time I get to the Council meeting, I am mightily fed up of liaising and steering and internally governancing. But more than looking forward to a bit of counselling. It transpires I have got my spellings muddled. We have some Really Contentious Things to discuss. Everyone thinks I will try to bulldoze Council round to my point of view. They are looking forward to the challenge, not to mention the spectacle. There is a better turn-out than we have had at a Council meeting for a long time. Faces look up at me expectantly. Well I am not that stupid. Also I have internally governanced myself into exhaustion. I am perfectly happy to let the meeting go the way of the majority. The expectancy turns to disappointment. There is a sound like the sound of 25 bicycle tyres developing slow punctures. Next time there will not be such a good turn-out. Next time I will be much better placed to bulldoze things through. Mwa ha ha! 29 June 2015, 10 am
This morning, there is a meeting of the new Education and Professional Standards Steering Committee. I do like a good steering committee. Task forces are all very well, but they are hard work because they’re expected to get on and do things. Steering committees are gentler, and comforting to people like me who would otherwise feel disorientated a great deal of the time. This committee is steering four separate working groups. The working groups need objectives. Their first objective is to define their other objectives. Their second objective is to set the deadline by which to achieve these other objectives. Their third objective is to decide how to measure whether the other objectives have been achieved. Their fourth objective is to use the methods decided on in the third objective to measure whether the objectives defined by the first objective have been achieved by the deadline set by the second objective: if they have, then it is time to define the next set of objectives; if they have but only partly, then all the objectives must be redefined; if they have not, then the working groups must tell themselves off and work harder in future. Obviously the objectives must be SMART objectives. Any other type of objective would be basically useless, and then you would not be able to get on and actually do anything anyway. 29 June 2015, 11.30 am I am at the twice-yearly high-level IPO meeting which is affectionately known as the “Four Presidents’ meeting”. This year there will only be three Presidents and me. Plus the top IPO people, of course, but they have well got the measure of me because they read my not-so-secret diary that keeps getting laid open to the public and damaging reputations. The meeting gets off to a good start, from CIPA’s point of view. The IPO are delighted with us for sending comments about their Five-Year Plan. Turns out the other three Presidents never quite got round to it, so CIPA is the IPO’s Best Friend Forever and I am showered with praise. I accept graciously on CIPA’s behalf. Though it does feel uncomfortably like those days back at school when I got singled out for being the only person in the class who thought it might be useful to learn stuff before an exam. The IPO tell us about all the exciting things they are doing, and then we tell the IPO about all the exciting things we are doing, a lot of which involve sending comments about the exciting things the IPO are doing. And the IPO ask us what they can do to help with our exciting things and we ask what we can do to help with their exciting things, other than sending in comments about them of course. And we all leave with a very warm feeling inside, not to mention some excellent sandwiches. 25 June 2015, 5.30 pm
On the 23rd floor of the meanest hotel in Manchester, CIPA members gather for over-priced drinks, to celebrate having learned more about the UPC and lemons in one afternoon than they could ever have believed possible. During this “happy hour”, I learn that my diary has been causing offence again, albeit largely to people who really should know better than to keep on reading it. There are concerns about reputational damage. The problem with putting your secret diary on the internet is that anyone might stumble across it. And then they might think that the CIPA Pee is a bumbling numpty, or worse, that CIPA is full of bumbling numpties, because they might not understand that someone who writes about herself as a bumbling numpty probably doesn’t really believe she is one but just wants to cheer other people up. Perhaps it is time to stop writing rubbish and start being a proper serious Pee after all. Perhaps it is unwise in these days of social media to try being humorous, in case the humour gets into the wrong hands. On Twitter® I have just over 180 followers, and on my blog, the princely total of 11. With those levels of exposure, you can’t be too careful. 25 June 2015, 2.30 pm
The Manchester regional seminar is mostly about the UPC. Apart from the bits I say in between, which are mostly rubbish. One of the UPC talks includes real, live play acting by five plucky volunteers, who read out bits of dialogue from a recent mock trial. Their roles are: an erudite UPC judge; a grumpy UPC rapporteur; two patent attorneys representing the plaintiff; and an outraged patent attorney representing the defendant. This is a great way to bring the UPC to life. Many in the room begin to realise that actually this is something they could do too. Acting, that is. Another of the talks is about inter partes review and post-grant review in the United States. The IPR process is remarkably similar to that of a UPC action, except that in the US the tribunal has about a year to decide on validity whereas in Europe it will have about a year to decide on validity, infringement, entitlement and anything else that gets thrown at it. Our US speaker feels the Europeans may be a little optimistic. Presumably the Europeans feel the Americans are a little inefficient. However, it has to be said that the Americans are already achieving what they promised, whereas the Europeans have been talking about a unitary patent since the early 1960s and have only just got round to arguing about renewal fees. And with classic timing, of course, the UK is now considering leaving the EU anyway. Our final talk is not about the UPC at all. It is about how to get more out of your business development activities. Some people in the audience did not even know they were supposed to do business development activities. So we are a little nervous. The speaker, who likes to use props, has cut a lemon in half. He demonstrates how you can squeeze a lemon to get more juice out of it. Then he says you can squeeze your contacts to get more business out of them. Ouch. And if you do not squeeze them right, I think, they will make your eyes water. The speaker says the best way to network is just to be yourself. I am not sure this is entirely true in the case of patent attorneys. For the final twenty minutes, I am distracted by the sight of two halves of lemon sitting next to me on the table. It is getting close to happy hour and I cannot stop thinking about how nicely they would go with a gin or two. 24 June 2015, 9 pm
The Officers hold a catch-up teleconference, to catch up on what kinds of trouble I’ve been causing since they last checked. Actually it is just the Onssek, the Chief Eggsek, The EyeEyePeePee and me, because the VeePee and the EyePeePee have better things to do. We start at 9 pm, by which time I have drunk the canned cocktail and eaten the plasticated salad so I am actually quite glad to have people to talk to. We do not finish till 10.30 pm. I have been causing a lot of trouble lately. I am worried that the bedside lamp will be charged at double rate after 10 pm, so I attempt to go to bed in the dark. This turns out to be a mistake. I end up with a plastic salad pot on my foot and lettuce leaves in the bedclothes. 25 June 2015, 10 am I meet up with Mr Davies and we visit some more patent attorneys in Manchester. We talk about what it is like being a CIPA member in the north-west when so much stuff is happening in London. I make the mistake of referring to some of the events that take place in Leeds, because I didn’t realise that when people from Manchester go across the Pennines they explode. But it is true, apparently. People from Manchester cannot go to Leeds. It is amazing what you can learn talking to CIPA members. 24 June 2015, 6 pm
And the award for the meanest hotel in Manchester goes to… But that would be telling. My room is spacious; it has that going for it. But the space is possibly the only thing that is complimentary, so I had better make the most of it. There is wifi, for the business person On the Move, but I will have to pay for it. There is a bottle of mineral water looking welcoming on the table, with a note beside it urging me to “Stay Hydrated”, but there is a price tag to Staying Hydrated and it is not one I am prepared to pay. Not while there’s a cold water tap in the bathroom, at any rate. There is also an “in-room dining” menu, but all the decimal points are in the wrong places. So I have to go out Sad Shopping, for cocktails-in-cans and salads-in-plastic and chocolate bars in, well, anything really, and then I have to sneak back in with my supermarket carrier bags when the concierge isn’t looking, because he might be cross that I am organising my own in-room dining. Back in the room, with the canned cocktail and the plasticated salad, I find myself worrying that I might accidentally have incurred all sorts of additional charges. What if the instant coffee sachets are going on my room bill? Am I allowed to watch telly? Is the water metered? Is the air conditioning complimentary? If I put my Sad Shopping in the fridge, which may have been a minibar at one time but has since seen a plague of locusts, will I be charged for taking it out again? Having arrived here first class, albeit accidentally, it is somewhat depressing to end the day with these kinds of questions. 24 June 2015, 11.45 am
I am visiting some in-house CIPA members near Manchester. They cannot really understand why I have bothered. They say: CIPA spends most of its time helping private practice attorneys with their clients and their invoicing and their complaints handling policies, so why should in-house attorneys have to pay as much for membership as the private practice ones do? I think this is perhaps a fair point. So I tell them about all the other stuff CIPA does, for both types of patent attorney, especially the educational stuff which is FAB. They nod politely, but I think they would rather I’d offered them a refund. They have bought in biscuits especially for my visit. I don’t like to take one now I know they think CIPA is fleecing them. 24 June 2015, 3.15 pm I meet some more CIPA members, who are in private practice doing invoicing and complaints handling in the centre of Manchester. They also offer me biscuits. This time I take one, because after all they are getting an amazing deal on their membership fees compared to the people in industry. They seem surprised to hear that they are still CIPA members, and indeed that CIPA still exists. When I tell them it is the Manchester regional meeting tomorrow, they are even more surprised. This is not a good start to a discussion about the value of membership, but things liven up when they show me the new-look CIPA Journal that arrived this week. I think it looks ACE. They say, Feel free to take it out of the packaging; we might not get round to it. 24 June 2015, 10 am
Unlucky Gary has accidentally booked me a first class train ticket. For some reason unknown to anyone, including the train operator itself, on this service a first class ticket costs less than a standard class ticket. Perhaps I am supposed to help with the washing up, but no one has asked me yet. So here I am, with a table set before me and not just an at-seat trolley service but a complete à-la-carte breakfast being laid on for me by an army of obliging staff. There is smoked salmon and eggs Benedict, fresh fruit and pastries, and for the plebs there are even bowls of cereal, although cereal is not available between London and the Midlands. Why there should be a shortage of cereal in this region I do not know, and probably this is another issue on which the train operator is not quite in possession of all the facts. Now I am being offered toast and marmalade, as I sit at my laptop pretending not to be fazed. But I know how much I have paid for this ticket and there is no way on earth that the provision of all this obliging-ness and à-la-carte-ness can be financially viable. At some point, surely, I will get found out and asked to move to another coach. Being the CIPA Pee doesn't carry much weight when it comes to first class rail travel. 23 June 2015, 3 pm
I meet with Ms Wilkinson from the IPO. We think we are unlikely to get decent biscuits at the IPO, so we accidentally end up again at the coffee shop that sells the caramel custard tarts. It seems churlish not to have one each. I don’t know what they have put in Ms Wilkinson’s caramel custard tart but it is clearly quite potent, because she is on fire with inspirational ideas for her session at CIPA Congress. Some of these ideas will come as a bit of a shock to the IP community, I suspect, although in a nice kind of way. My own caramel custard tart is an ordinary one. I do not have any inspirational ideas. This means I finish eating some time before Ms Wilkinson. It takes a lot of self-discipline not to ask if I can have the rest of her tart while she is busy explaining what’s going to happen at Congress. |
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