8 February 2016, 10.30 am
The VeePee and I meet with a couple of learned academics, who want to do some research into how innovative businesses use their IP. They want to know what happens to the IP advice that these budding entrepreneurs are given. Well I can tell you the answer to that without you needing to do any sophisticated analyses. They stuff the advice down their socks and forget they put it there. The academics thought maybe they could learn something useful from the CIPA clinics. These are indeed fertile ground for the types of entrepreneur who stuff IP advice down their socks and put it through the washing machine with the rest of their laundry. If you want to meet the people who are ignoring IP advice, CIPA clinics are a good place to start. But equally, I say – trying to find something positive to counteract the VeePee’s somewhat negative stance on the value of this research – similar types of clinics are going on all the time in patent practices up and down the country. New clients and potential new clients, and some to whom you would struggle to apply even the word “potential”, phone up day after day asking for free advice, or come and drink coffee with you and share their most private ambitions, and afterwards you just know the advice is being stuffed down their socks and will never trouble them again. I offer to put the academics in touch with the people dispensing these pro bono laundry aids. They say they will go and think some more about what to put in their survey questionnaire. For instance: do you stuff the advice down your right sock or your left sock?
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7 February 2016
One of the most exciting things that will happen at CIPA this year – aside from getting a proper President – is our 125th Charter Anniversary. Yes, we will indeed have had a Royal Charter for 125 years, and a ceremonial gavel for almost as long. So there is much cause for celebration. Mr Lampert has added a banner to our “three muses” logo so we can make our letters look that extra bit special. As well as an anniversary party and a celebratory OGM, we are planning an anthology of CIPA members’ memoirs and anecdotes, and we have called for contributors. We want to hear from people whose lives have been deeply affected by CIPA membership, or who have fond memories of happy hours, cricket matches, dragon boat races and other CIPA-related adventures. We want to know if the arrival of the Journal once a month – or roughly that, depending on the alignment of the planets with the Editor’s diary – has been the highlight of people’s working routines; and if they have drawn comfort from the annual rhythm of OGMs, AGMs, Council elections and P6 retakes. Or if CIPA membership has brought people joy or comfort or life-long friends or at least consolation for the fates having made them patent attorneys. But most of all, we want to hear from people who met their partners through CIPA. Not their business partners, obviously, but their loved ones, their soul-mates, the people with whom they share pillow-talk about Article 123. The ones who pick them up on grammatical errors in their birthday cards. We know there are several married couples in which not just one but actually two of the constituent parts are patent attorney in origin. So there must be something about CIPA meetings that fans the flames of passion, or at least awakens a sense of goodwill sufficient to last beyond the next trade mark assignment and into a genuine human relationship. We want to hear from these people! We want to know all the juicy details of how they met and why they decided it would be appropriate to enter into a long term contractual obligation. And we want to know whether there is any kind of synergy when you combine two patent attorneys, or whether it is more like combining two pieces of prior art, ie detrimental to inventiveness. We would also be interested to hear from you if your parents were CIPA members, or if your children have become CIPA members, because these days people are more alert to child abuse and we can find someone to help. We do not want to hear from the people who have suffered distress, irritation, frustration or kneecap-numbing tedium as a result of being in CIPA, for example on CIPA Council. We know who you are and we just don’t think it will be good for publicity. 6 February 2016
Today I am putting together a constitution for the diversity task force (da-da-da-DA!!), so that it can be a proper association and have its own bank account in which to put the vast numbers of funds it has not yet acquired. Why anyone is prepared to trust me with a legal document I don’t know. I have not drafted so much as a dependent claim in two years. I may even have forgotten how to use the passive voice. Fortunately, a kindly solicitor has sent me a precedent constitution, of the type wherewith an association may henceforth establish itself with the requisite degree of formality. My challenge is to reduce the word count by half. After a few hours of pen-chewing, I come up with the following key terms:
I am really rather pleased with this draft. I will send it to the other task force members forthwith, and tell them to approve it. 4 February 2016
Now that I know about unconscious bias, I know that when you sift CVs you should take people’s names out, like Mr Davies does. This is so that if you accidentally have a prejudice against, say, people with double-barrelled surnames, or people named after television programmes, or people named after terrorists, or people whose names you suspect you’re not going to be able to spell right on your website, this doesn’t lead you to make an unfair selection. But I am a member of the appointments panel charged with not being prejudiced against the next IPReg Chairperson. And I have been sent a bunch of CVs which, I understand (I have not looked at them myself), still have names on. I think this is bad form. I ask if the names might be removed. Well, say the recruitment consultants, it would be a faff to remove the names. Especially now we’ve put them all the way through our comments about the candidates. It will cost you a lot of money for us to remove the names now. Well, say some of my fellow panellists (who are white and wear the right kind of underwear, ie they are not foreigners or girlies), you really are kicking up a fuss about nothing, my dear. We are so clever and we have such good processes that we are immune from unconscious bias. Indeed, we have used this kind of appointment process for decades, for all manner of senior public appointments, and we have always managed to find the best candidate. They give me examples of some of the best candidates that have been appointed to senior public positions in this way. They are all white. A lot of them are not girlies. So you see, clearly white males are better candidates for senior public appointments. What exactly am I worried about? It occurs to me that thinking you are immune from unconscious bias is like thinking you are immune from the placebo effect, and that if everyone could be that clever, we would not need to design such complicated, randomised double-blind clinical trials. So obviously, say my fellow panellists, you are just another CIPA trouble-maker, trying to derail a time-honoured procedure for the sake of some namby-pamby management bollocks about wanting a diverse legal profession. They point out that the other legal services regulators, including the Legal Services Board itself (all hail!) do not bother with anonymised CVs. Which must make it alright. They are hoping that soon I will stop shouting and start crying. Well they may be right about the crying but they’re not about the shouting. |
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