16 January 2017, 9 am
I speak with another of my EPO conference panellists, and her colleague from the IP Awareness Network. By way of context for my panel topic, they remind me how difficult it is to get universities to engage with IP. Universities are too busy nurturing brilliant minds to worry about what happens when the brilliant minds come up with marketable ideas. We agree we must aim for a world in which every university mentions IP in its prospectus, and potential students choose their degree courses based on the elegance of the IP policy. We also agree that the barrier to achieving such a world is that IP is basically not sexy enough. Despite the efforts of many stunningly sexy patent attorneys over the decades. Students look for careers advice and job centres, diversity initiatives, counselling and support schemes, influential student unions. They look for drinking opportunities, shuttle buses to the nearest nightclub, on-site coffee shops and fast food outlets. They do not typically leaf through prospectuses seeking photos of glamorous IP-related activities. We think perhaps we should train up one or two IP “ambassadors” for each university. Then we can send them in among the normal students, to spread the word about IP and to convert other students into a similar state of IP readiness. Perhaps “missionaries” might be a more appropriate term than “ambassadors”, so long as we could find students with sufficient zeal to turn IP into a mission. Alternatively, we could just bombard universities with IP information, delivered by drones straight to their halls of residence. A drone is a less risky proposition than a student who cares enough about IP to turn it into an undergraduate mission, and less likely to need therapy afterwards. Another good idea would be to make IP part of the curriculum, in all subjects, even the ones that patent attorneys have traditionally regarded as insufficiently serious to warrant attention. It would only require one research topic, one measly module dripping with accreditation points, to make every student engage with this important commercial tool. What IP would Virgil have had in his works, had he had access to proper IP training, and when would it have expired? How has IP affected the psychological development of vulnerable scientists? Name some of the great artists who depicted IP in their works. Create a dramatic piece about exhaustion of rights. That type of thing.
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