8 October 2017, 8 pm
Nothing compares to the excitement of invigilating for the UK qualifying exams. I cannot wait to get started tomorrow. No, really. I re-read my invigilator’s instructions, because although I have been trained by the fierce Ms Sear, it is a while now since the training and I am getting forgetful. I remind myself of the key things I have been told about the job:
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6 October 2017
I venture into Brizzle to shop. I must source an outfit for visiting Her Majesty in November. It all goes well to start with: I find a frock that fits, and a jacket as well, and I am about to scarper and head off for a celebratory coffee and cake. But then it is pointed out to me, by people who know about these things, because they earn commission from them, that the frock and the jacket are only the starting point. I will also need a hat-stroke-fascinator. I will need a handbag. And I will need SHOES. Would madam like to try on some shoes now, to see the full effect of the outfit? No, madam would not. Madam does not intend to buy shoes to go with the new outfit. Madam wears boots with everything. And madam does not intend to break that habit even for Her Majesty. After all, I figure, it would be impolite to hobble up to Her Majesty and ask if I could borrow her throne for a while because my feet were killing me. The shop assistants are a little fazed by this. I am a woman, am I not? I must therefore Like Shoes. I must covet bits of bejewelled plastic set on unfeasibly high heels with excruciatingly narrow pointy toe sections. I must surely want new things to wear on my feet with my new posh frock, that I cannot walk in, that rub up blisters and that make me miserable while I stand around waiting to be OBE-d. My issue is this. If I had done as all good women are supposed to, and worn unfeasibly high heels and excruciatingly narrow pointy toe sections, I would probably not have been able to do the stuff that got me the OBE in the first place. I would still be tiptoeing my way gingerly across the London streets, or hobbling to catch a train, instead of striding out purposefully telling people what namby-pamby things they were going to do next. So why would I suddenly start Liking Shoes now? 5 October 2017
I am busy enjoying my first day of obscurity (which is another term Mr Davies used in his text message, there being no emojis for abstract nouns either, although I am sure Apple® are working on it). I am thinking: my Not-so-Secret Diary will now have to be called the Not-so-Secret Diary of a CIPA Nobody. And I am quite enjoying that thought, because you can get away with a whole lot more when people know for sure that none of it counts for anything. Shortly after my obscurity begins, however, the new VeePee writes to me from her pink-and-purple desktop. She says that she and Mr Jones are thinking about going out again to Meet-the-Members and their biscuits, like Mr Davies and I did when I was VeePee. She says perhaps I might have some good ideas about how to do this, now that I have had the chance to sober up. I try to remember what it was like. I seem to recall you need a very thick skin (for when the members tell you how rubbish CIPA is); and a very warm heart (for when they tell you they love CIPA anyway); an insatiable appetite for biscuits; and the bare-faced cheek to invite yourself to everyone’s offices for tea. You need a massive supply of Red Bull®, an excellent SatNav, a sturdy suitcase, a pair of boots that you can walk miles in without arriving looking like an advert for a dry stone walling course, and a hugely organised diary. Plus somebody at home to pick up the pieces when you arrive back late and tired, cry a bit and then start packing for the next trip. I say to Ms Florence: Of course, it is more efficient if you meet with several people in one place. But if you really want to know what makes our members tick, and what challenges they face, and what they want CIPA to do about it, nothing beats turning up at their offices and helping yourself to their biscuits. I do not add that if you must meet with several people in one place, you should make sure that place is not a bar. Because actually what happens then is that they tell you all their deepest secrets, but by the morning you have forgotten everything. Whereas you have meanwhile told them all your deepest secrets, and they have not forgotten. 4 October 2017
Although I am not at the AGM in person to see this happen, I am reliably informed by Mr Davies that I am no longer the EyePeePee. His text message exudes relief. If there were an emoji for “Thank God I am rid of this lunatic at last!”, iOS 11 would have inserted it for him. So we have a new Pee, who is Mr Jones, and a new VeePee, who is Ms Florence, and poor Mr Rollins – who has had to cope with all the Brexit shenanigans – can go back home for a bit of peace and quiet, and start taking holidays again like he used to when I was Pee. They are good people, the new Pee and VeePee, but I particularly like Ms Florence because she is a patent attorneyette and also because she wears pink-and-purple a lot, even in her hair, which makes her look like she only became a CIPA Council member by accident when no one was looking. It is heart-warming to realise that there are now quite a few such Council members. We are quietly infiltrating the Establishment, we Unconventional, Unsober-Suited Ones. And Mr Davies is running out of emojis. 2 October 2017, 12.30 pm
I have organised a thank you lunch for the oral proceedings course tutors. It is being held dans les nether regions du Posh French Restaurant. It is actually intended to be a working lunch, to debrief them on the last course and plan the next one. But people are far happier exchanging stories of what happened that time when they last went to an EPO hearing, and to be honest I am far happier eating my starter because it is a long time since I got out of bed this morning and I am hungry. So we do a small amount of debriefing and planning, and the rest of the time they ignore me and I ignore them and everything est beaucoup civilised. Among the beaucoup de civilised decisions we make about next year’s course are the following. Firstly, we are not going to do an advanced course on appeal proceedings, because even the EPO do not know how appeal proceedings are going to proceed once the rules have been rewritten and the Boards of Appeal rehoused. Secondly, we are not going to make the current course more difficult, because although some of the delegates appear just a little too confident, we know for a fact that their confidence is misplaced. Thirdly, we may include some additional teaching on advocacy and presentation skills, for instance about standing up straight and modulating your voice and not chewing your pen top or otherwise irritating the tribunal, because this is indeed one of the areas in which we think people’s confidence may be misplaced. Finally, we may or may not introduce some more guidance in the mock hearings about what the putative client wants out of the patent. Delegates have in the past suggested that such information might have helped them prepare for the hearings, when they finally got round to looking at the papers an hour before the workshop. But whilst we agree with the premise about the information being useful, we also believe it is more realistic if you have not the foggiest idea what your client wants before you go into the hearing, and the client has not the foggiest idea what is going to happen in the hearing, and only after the tribunal’s decision does either of you realise how badly wrong it all went. We are similarly disinclined to give a helpful preliminary opinion from the tribunal, because it is also more realistic to go into a hearing with not the foggiest idea what you are going to have to argue about or why. The only other thing we have decided is that we need beaucoup more tutors. The current few are getting grumpy and Le Posh French Restaurant may not let them in again next time. 2 October 2017, 8 am
I am already back in London again, to re-record the last of the administrators’ webinars that I failed to record properly last time. At CIPA I am shut in the back office on my own for three hours to talk to myself. Ms Sear says it is better that way. She says it is for my own good. But I think she feels it is for other people’s good too. Once or twice, Mr Mische pokes his head round the door to sort out the IT problems I am causing. Then one time when he does this, the partition doors start to fall over and he almost cannot get out, and after that no one comes to visit me at all. Perhaps I am getting paranoid, but it does seem as though wherever I go, things fall over. I just hope that this time the microphone was awake. I do not think I can face doing these webinars for a third time; the script was boring enough when I wrote it and is not the type of thing that improves with age. 29 September 2017
Some kind person on Twitter® thanks me for yesterday evening’s drinks and canapés. I say: You’re welcome; I made them myself. I do not expect anyone to be fooled by this. The canapés were tasty. They looked elegant. Nothing that is both elegant and tasty has ever emerged from my kitchen. 28 September 2017, 5 pm
At the end of Congress, CIPA hosts an IP Inclusive get-together with drinks and tasty canapés. We are introducing our latest support group, IP & ME, which is for BAME people, or foreigners as they are known to those who have not kept up with the changing times. Our plan is that in a truly inclusive IP profession, no one will need to feel like a foreigner, not even the people from Oop North or Doon ’Yur in the Wess Curntry. But for the time being, until the truly inclusive profession is within sight, a support group seems a sensible precaution. I make a short speech about IP Inclusive and tell people about the many events we have organised in the next couple of months. Then I hurry home to make sure we really have organised them. 28 September 2017, 8 am
It is the day of the Grand CIPA Congress. I arrive bright and early because I am going to be manning an IP Inclusive stand in the exhibition hall. The IP Inclusive stand consists of two spanking new pop-up banners we have had made (one for IP Inclusive and one for Careers in Ideas), some handouts, what is known as a “poseur table”, my good friend Ms Evans, and me. A “poseur table” is a tiny round table on a stick, which is just the right height for a confident male to stand posing at, but just too tall for me to see over the top of. Ms Evans, who is taller than me, reliably informs me that the handouts are on top of the poseur table, but I am unable to verify this for myself. I do not make a very good poseur. I am wishing I could have a proper table like the other exhibitors, but clearly I am not important enough for that. In between bouts of stand-manning and posing, I pop in and out of the Congress sessions in order to accrue a little more CPD, albeit in ten-minute chunks. Congress is very busy, and there is only just room for me to stand at the side of the room to listen to the speakers. This means that throughout the course of the day, I do quite a bit of standing around posing and very little sitting. When Ms Evans has had enough of the man-standing and posing, she asks the venue staff to bring us a couple of chairs. The chairs do not arrive quickly enough so then Ms Evans goes into her Scary Lady routine and threatens to wrap the poseur table around the head waiter’s neck, and after that two chairs arrive pretty promptly, by which time I am too exhausted to do anything much but sink into one of them. Luckily there is no such thing as a poseur chair. I do take a break from the posing at one point, to give a talk to the parallel administrators’ conference. This is a conference running in parallel, not a conference full of administrators arranged in equidistant lines. Mr Davies, who is MC-ing the parallel conference for some reason, is ready on the stage to introduce me. He is wearing comedy white shoes and a comedy white bow-tie, and wielding a Gandalf-style stick. He makes the poseur table look positively dowdy. He introduces me and I step up to the lectern to tell people about how to write better letters. Ten minutes later, half of the wall hangings fall down on the far side of the room, and after that nobody listens to me anymore. I now appreciate how Theresa May felt when her slogans started coming down around her at the Tory Party Conference. I know a lot about letter writing, me. In my job I have had to read many, many awful letters, some written by opponents, some by patent office staff who might just as well be opponents, some by my own dear colleagues, and some even by myself. They have been tedious, turgid, often unclear, and usually designed to leave the reader incensed. Afterwards, someone from the audience asks me: At what point did you get the courage to dispense with rubbishy waffly bits like “I write in connection with the abovementioned patent application and further to our recent correspondence in respect of this matter”? I say I cannot remember; possibly it was shortly after another patent attorney told me my letters were so full of rubbishy waffle she could not even be bothered to take a red pen to them. You know things are bad when a patent attorney stops enjoying her red pen. 21 September 2017
I spend the evening learning how to use Eventbrite®. It is important that I do this, so that I can organise IP Inclusive events without needing to write six spreadsheets and send fifty emails just to get twenty people in a room together. Eventbrite is my new favourite piece of wizardry. All you do is fill in a few boxes and hey presto, you can invite people to something that looks like a proper event rather than a Secret Seven meeting in a shed. The best thing of all is that you can completely make up what you put in the boxes, for instance about the venue and the refreshments and what brilliant speakers you have, because nobody checks whether you are telling the truth or not. So I set up several amazing seminars, two cocktail receptions and an international conference, and I do not get found out. I ask Mr Davies to check that I have done everything properly. He says I have, almost, except for the bits that I have not done at all. These are things I did not even know you could do, but of course once someone mentions them they make perfect sense. After a while, Mr Davies says he is bored and is going to play with his new fishing rod instead. So I am on my own again with the things that make perfect sense except when you are on your own with them. To make myself feel better, I set up an IP symposium and a rock concert in CIPA Hall. |
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