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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
July 2019
Categories |