2 October 2015, 5.15 pm I drag my ten-ton suitcase back to Paddington to catch the train home. CIPA Congress 2015 is over, and after a week in London I can finally return to the parts of my family that have not yet left to live in the lap of luxury as so-called students. It has been an absolutely fantastic Congress. Here are some of the highlights. The Congress hotel When I arrived at the Congress hotel, its booking system was having an unfortunately-timed breakdown. Despite my attempts to explain the unfortunateness to the hotel staff, there was nothing to be done: no one could check in and presumably no one could check out either. By the time the system had recovered, it had forgotten everything it ever knew, so it made things up (an approach I’ve been known to take myself). This resulted in me accidentally being upgraded to a suite on the 17th floor, with breathtaking triple-aspect views of the London skyline, a lounge area big enough to house most of the Congress delegates, and three plums on a plate. (I am not stupid enough to eat the plums, in case they are charged at the same rate as the minibar items.) The suite also boasts two sinks, a bidet which I recognise because I once stayed with some French people, a Jacuzzi which I recognise because of the smell, a bottle of undoubtedly uncomplimentary wine, a pot plant (that’s a plant in a pot, by the way, in case you were worried) and a pod coffee machine. I do not use the pod coffee machine on account of it reminds me of poisonous priorities. At the end of the sumptuous bed, on which the sumptuous pillows are plumped up three times a day by the Plumping-up Pixies, there is a blanket box. This blanket box is one of the best things in the room. When you get bored of it being a blanket box, you press a button and the top flips up and a wide-screen television levitates out of it, thus proving that it never was a blanket box in the first place. How cool is that??? The Congress lanyards Every delegate has a Congress lanyard this year. It has their name on, and it has the Congress timetable printed on the other side. So, if any of us should wander out and get lost, or forget why we are here or when we need to return – or indeed who we are – passers-by can gently point us back in the right direction. The lanyards were the brainchild of Fantastic Fran, who is used to having to point befuddled CIPA members in the right direction. The Congress opening speech Actually it is the end of the Congress opening speech that is the highlight, because the opening speech is by the CIPA Pee and the CIPA Pee is me. Our compère, who is a professional journalist and has done his research, introduces me by reminding everyone that I am the most un-Pee-like Pee they have ever elected. I briefly consider suing him for slander until I remember that (a) it is true and (b) it was me who said that in the first place. In my speech, I tell people that IP professionals have a duty to help shape the IP system of the future, to make sure it is Fit for Purpose. I tell them CIPA is already busy doing this. I tell them we must listen to our clients and if they say the IP system is rubbish we must not get snotty with them, but instead try to make things better. That gets a few laughs. Anyway, I remember my words, I finish on time and this year, I don’t drop any straw on the stage. See how I’ve come on in the last twelve months! I am actually just a little bit Pee-like now. The Congress panel sessions (part i) During Day One, we witness some fascinating panel discussions on topical topics, like global patent harmonisation and infringement in online markets and IP for start-ups and spin-outs. There is also a session about how patent attorneys can communicate better with their clients, which is silly because everyone knows what good communicators patent attorneys are and how excellent their command of the language with which they duly craft their correspondence. Some business people say: You need to understand our businesses better. Ha! Perchance they need to understand IP better and stop being obstructively dense. The Congress policeman There is not really a policeman just for Congress, but we do have a keynote speaker who is a Detective Inspector and he says he enjoys arresting people. We all behave impeccably during this speech. The policeman is there to tell us about IP crime, and in particular about IP crime on the internet, and the money laundering and drugs trading and arms dealing and identity fraud that go on behind it. Not to mention the counterfeit makeup with cyanide in, although the policeman says he does not personally know a lot about the makeup but some lady policemen have told him about it. He says you might think that solving internet crime is all about sitting at computers typing things into Amazon® and eBay®. But it is not. We still get to do dawn raids, he says, bashing people’s doors down and putting them in handcuffs and things. We all sit very, very quietly and when he asks if there are any questions we say No, thank you. Sir. The Congress lifts The Congress hotel has some lifts. The lifts have gold-plated mirrors and pretty pictures inside them, but they do not like going up and down. In particular they do not often make the effort to sink to the bowels of the basement, which is unfortunate because that is where CIPA Congress is being held. When you eventually find a lift that’s prepared to take you, it crawls from floor to floor as though hoping you will get out earlier than planned and stop requiring it to work for a living. It even goes downwards grudgingly, and you’d have thought a lift would enjoy going downwards, what with gravity and all. None of this is any good if, like me, you have been upgraded to a 17th floor luxury suite with levitating televisions. Without walking poles and oxygen, it is not really an option to give up on the lift and take the stairs. The Congress dinner The Congress dinner is packed. On the plus side, this means the room is warmer than it has been all day. On the minus side, it means that if I put my bread roll down too heavily on my side plate, my neighbour’s knife gets catapulted into the next table’s butter dish. My neighbour is the Right Honourable Professor Sir Robin Jacob, who is renowned for not suffering fools, and also for construing the word “fools” quite broadly. So I do not want to upset him by causing him to smash up the next table’s butter dish by mistake. The Right Honourable Professor Sir gives a pre-dinner speech. I have managed to persuade him to take part in my Mad Idea of a special Congress version of Room 101. Unsurprisingly, he has a number of suggestions as to what he might like to despatch into The IP Room 101. Most of them seem entirely justified, although they cannot all be reported in writing, even by me. Eventually he picks economists and competition lawyers, having told us all the things that economists have either predicted wrong or caused to go wrong during a long and happy history of patents serving us perfectly well anyway, thank you. There are cheers of assent. The Professor Sir looks pleased. We let people eat their starters and then one of the IP Kats stands up to announce his choice for The IP Room 101. It is poisonous divisionals and toxic priorities (yay!). He attempts to explain these concepts. The more we listen to the explanation, the more ridiculous it sounds. This may have something to do with the beverages we are consuming, which are not really the type to stimulate clarity and sufficiency. We all voice our agreement to putting poisonous whatchamacallits into The IP Room 101. The IP Kat purrs. After the main course, the Journal Editor Mr Poore takes to the lectern. What he most dislikes, he says, is blinkers. Or rather, patent attorneys who wear blinkers. And generally people who refuse to look around them at what is going on in the world, but instead hope it will go away and leave them alone. We all of us know a few people like that. We drink more wine and murmur approval at Mr Poore for saying blinking thingummies should go in The IP Whatsit. Then it is pudding. And then Mr Davies is at the lectern pretending to be Frank Skinner. He shows us pictures he has prepared from the internet, of the Professor Sir being an economist, presiding lasciviously over a deskful of money, like the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk; and of a poisonous divisional with a skull-and-cross-bones on it; and of Mr Poore wearing blinkers. He asks the audience to choose which of these is the worst. And on the stage there is a large white dustbin which the CIPA staff have bought specially, to represent The IP Room 101. By a statistically significant majority, the audience chooses to despatch economists and competition lawyers into the bin. The Honourable Sir Professor looks more pleased than I’m guessing he expected to be, and Mr Poore gets given a framed copy of the picture of him wearing blinkers. It is possibly the most hideous piece of artwork ever created, and you can tell he is wondering whether he can sneak it into the dustbin anyway while no one is looking. The Congress CIPA awards We have decided to present some annual CIPA awards to people who have done Good Things for IP and the IP community. Mr Davies calls me to the lectern at the end of dinner, to explain to people why we are doing this. But when I get to the lectern I cannot remember why we are doing this, only that it seemed like a fun idea. Mr Davies reminds me that it is in the Strategic Plan. He does not remind me why we put it in the Strategic Plan. So we gloss over the explanation bit and get on with the ceremony. Mr Davies and I – particularly Mr Davies – have spent many hours perusing websites for trophies. In the end we found some most distinctive-looking glass decanters which Mr Davies has arranged to be engraved with the CIPA logo and put into silk-lined presentation boxes. He also arranged for the thus-engraved and cosseted decanters to spend the weekend being driven round London by a hacked-off courier and almost lost for good just before they were due to be at the CIPA offices. But the itinerant trophies were found in the end and they do indeed look rather smart. The Informals present one to someone who has done a lot for education and training. Mr Poore presents one to a team of people who have written zillions of case law reports for the Journal. And then I present three, which makes me feel very important. Mr Lampert takes photos of me looking regal handing the rather smart decanters to people. I suspect these photos will never see the light of day. It is not quite the Oscars®, but it is certainly a night to remember. The Congress run This is pretty much the highlight of the highlights. On the morning of Day One, three people went swimming in the Serpentine before spending the day in the fiercely air-conditioned Congress hall. These people had to be defrosted before dinner. But on the morning of Day Two, there is a Congress run instead. Delegates have been invited to meet in the hotel lobby at 7 am, to join the President in a 5k run round Hyde Park. Surely everyone will want to go on a morning run with the President? It is crisp and sunny and the park looks gorgeous. At ten past seven, Lisa from the CIPA Membership Team and the CIPA President decide that possibly no one does want to go on a run. Lisa goes off on her bike and I go for a run on my own, and actually I am a little bit relieved because I’m not sure I should be seen huffing and puffing in a sweaty running top striking fear into the hearts of the Hyde Park squirrels. Just when I was starting to get more Pee-like. The Congress “Disruptive Technology” talk Our first keynote speaker on Day Two is going to tell us about disruptive technology. I know all about disruptive technology, because I have worked with Windows® 8. But it turns out the speaker is not talking about Windows 8. He is talking about artificial intelligence, and robotics, and virtual reality, and 3D-printing, and the internet, which is basically Google® with a bit of Amazon® thrown in. He is wearing a paint-spattered shirt to show how disruptive he is, and he tells us that computers are soon going to put all of us out of work. We will just sit on our sofas all day, he says, playing virtual reality games and being fed advertising content by the internet, and the moment we think a pizza might be nice, Amazon will 3D-print a pizza and have it delivered directly to our sofas together with some adverts for things we might want to eat with it. Like doughnuts. To support his prediction, he shows us a photo of a steak which has been artificially created by 3D-printing some enzymes. Those of us with a teeny-weeny bit of life sciences knowledge become a little sceptical at this point, because it appears that the speaker believes that meat is made of enzymes. It is possible, therefore, that he also believes that pizza is made of enzymes, or indeed that plastic is made of catalysts. Anyway, he continues, Google and Amazon want us to live to 150 just so that they have longer to feed us enzymes and advertising content and print 3D stuff for us. This is a sobering thought. As though life expectancy will soon be measured in dollars not years. Next, he shows us a video of a robot making a balloon model, which is just the type of thing you need a robot to be able to do for you, and one of a robot opening a present, which is also likely to be life-changing for many people. I am not being sarcastic here: if robots can make balloon models and open presents, soon human beings will not need to get involved in children’s parties at all, which will be a tremendous leap forward. If we can teach robots to shriek, fight, injure themselves on bouncy castles and throw up then we will eventually be able to dispense not only with parties but with children as well. I begin to take notes. Then the speaker’s own technology becomes disruptive and refuses to play the other videos he wants to show us, and crashes his slide show and sends him back to Slide One. The audience of patent attorneys spots its chance and moves in for the kill. Technology isn’t going to take away our jobs, they say. Technology cannot even hold up through a slide show. Technology sucks. The speaker says You just have the wrong kind of laptop. Actually, in my mind this is not the crux of the matter. To me there is a far bigger problem. If we are all going to be out of work and sitting on our sofas, how are we going to afford to buy the online content and the 3D-printed pizzas that Google and Amazon are advertising? It strikes me that someone has not been doing the maths properly here. After the talk, there is a panel debate about artificial intelligence taking over the work of a patent attorney. We conclude that it may not be long before computers can draft patent applications, and search patent applications, and examine them for novelty. Computers may even be able to assess inventive step. Hmm. Good luck with applying the problem and solution approach, I think; there is nothing intelligent about that. The EyeEyePeePee puts a different slant on things. He says: If computers are going to draft and file patent applications, then they will need their own Chartered Institute of Patent Computers. Let us hope they will be properly and proportionately regulated. The Congress panel sessions (part ii) On Day Two of Congress, the panel sessions are about the UPC, and whether IP encourages innovation or not, and also legal services regulation and governance. Nobody really knows what “governance” means but apparently one of the ways it can go wrong is when there are not enough women in top jobs. So we have clearly been doing it wrong for quite some time. The other governance problems, such as people in top jobs taking risks and taking others for a ride and generally taking the mickey, are almost certainly down to their not being women. I cannot imagine a woman rigging vehicle emissions tests. During the UPC session, we hear that the Germans have found a location for their Central Court. It is the site of a former US army hospital in a deserted and desolate location, the kind of place Scooby Doo would have gone to. The speaker says there are not many sandwich shops nearby, but I guess that doesn’t matter, because by the time the court opens you will be able to have your sandwiches 3D-printed for you, on demand, out of enzymes. The French have not yet agreed on a location for their court. But they are doing a lot of very productive shrugging about it. The Congress tweets Mr Davies and Mr Lampert have been busily and shoutily tweeting throughout Congress, as have other folk who can type quickly enough to keep up with the excitement. I only get round to tweeting on the journey home, and my tweet is more along the lines of “Phew! Congress is over! Wasn’t it great? #lol”. Possibly this involves an unacceptable use of hindsight. But it helps me identify the highlights, which as you can see, made Congress 2015 one of our finest yet.
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