5 March 2016, 3 pm
I am reading a document by HM Treasury. I think it has been written in the same way we write documents at CIPA. It is about how the government is going to make life better for everyone, from little people in little houses to little people in little businesses. One of the ways it is going to make life better for the little people is to reduce regulation, so that bigger businesses can get more “competitive” (for which read “greedy”) about the way they help little people and then the government won’t have to do anything to help the little people itself. The document says that regulators are to become more innovative. So they are to have Innovation Plans and they are to have Safe Regulatory Spaces in which to do their innovation. Apparently one type of Safe Regulatory Space you can have is a Regulatory Sandbox. You can also have an Innovation Space, where “new models can be trialled”. I am trying to picture how the IPReg offices will look once they have moved the desks aside to make room for the Sandboxes and the Innovation Spaces and the Regulatory Softplay Areas and the Regulatory Modelling Corners. And I am thinking that the result is unlikely to be a safe space at all; on the contrary, it is likely to be extremely crowded. Mr Heap will be glad he is moving on before things get too silly. It is all very well having cake and custard stuff at a farewell meeting, but if you had to play in the sand with patent and trade mark attorneys on a regular basis, you would surely want to top yourself before long?
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5 March 2016, 9 am
Here’s how to write a document:
4 March 2016
The highlight of today is not having to get up at 4.45 am and travel to London. There are no other highlights, since I spend the rest of my time doing back-to-back emails and drafts and organisational whatnot. I am OK at emails and organisational whatnots, but I am not so good at the drafts. I do them all in too much detail, of course, thus requiring me to work through till 9 pm. One of the drafts is about the Official CIPA Position on Brexit. When I have finished it, the EyeEyePeePee tells me off for being too neutral. He says my draft is pretty much meaningless. But the EyeEyePeePee was not at the Council meeting so he does not know that we intended the Official CIPA Position to be meaningless, because otherwise it would be too political, and then it might offend someone, or it might not fit with someone else’s views, or it might need more caveats. I say, Official Positions are supposed to be anodyne. Look at the government message on Brexit; you could almost believe there wasn’t going to be a referendum at all. The EyeEyePeePee is not impressed. No sir. He says we should be more positive in our Official Position. Positive, positive, positive, he says. I think perhaps he is forgetting he is a patent attorney. Patent attorneys are not supposed to be positive, positive positive, and I tell him I might have to expel him from CIPA if he persists in trying to see the sunny side of things like this. Possibly it has affected his brain, invigilating on a frozen football pitch for a week. 3 March 2016, 2 pm
Highlight number three of the day is a packet of biscuits and a can of Red Bull® back in the CIPA library, where we are holding a meeting of Past Presidents to talk about what Future Presidents should do. It is another of those end-of-series episodes of Doctor Who: Return of the Time Lords. The biscuits are the usual CIPA biscuits and nothing to write home about. The Biscuit Pixies do not visit that often anymore because I am too busy, so instead we put up with what Mr Davies allows us to order from the office supplies people when they bring the paper clips. I wish I had had time for pudding in the lovely restaurant just now. I would have ordered the salted caramel. There is always something with salted caramel on a dessert menu. It turns out that most of the Past Presidents have been unable to make the meeting and don’t really care what Future Presidents get up to. They are just glad to have escaped. But the ones who are there help Mr Davies and me to write a list of things the CIPA Pee has to do. Mr Davies says part of the Pee’s job is to be the Chief Eggsek’s friend. I say nobody ever told me that. He says yes, that’s evident. I say: whose job is it to be the Pee’s friend? But nobody can answer that one. We decide that although Council hates the word Leadership, nevertheless the Pee has to display some kind of Leadership otherwise we would never get anything done. We don’t get much done anyway, because even when we try out a little bit of Leadership it is a cautious, polite kind of Leadership so as not to offend people. Every now and then some maverick comes along and attempts the fierce kind of Leadership and we all know what happens then. Yes indeed. Half-way through the meeting, the VeePee remembers to arrive. He is a touch forgetful, the VeePee. I realise I shall have to ring him every week from now on, to check he still plans to be the Pee. Clearly it will be very bad news for me – and indeed for most of CIPA – if he forgets that. The VeePee says that where I have gone wrong as Pee is that I have done things in too much detail. He says that is why I am so busy all the time, and that is why everyone else is so busy dealing with my emails. I do not point out that doing things in detail at least means I turn up at the start of meetings, as opposed to half-way through them or three days after they’ve finished. The EyeEyePeePee and the Onssek are not at the meeting either, even though they know lots about what a CIPA Pee has to do and still have nightmares about it. This week they are busy invigilating for the EQEs, in the frozen wilds of Brizzle. Of course, Brizzle is not usually a frozen wild, but the EQEs are being held at the Ashton Gate Stadium and the owners of the stadium have got it into their heads that because footballers are happy enough working al fresco, it is OK to hold exams under similar conditions. They are not impressed by the namby-pamby London folk who get upset when the ink freezes in their pens. Apparently they have brought in some additional heaters for the exam hall, but the additional heaters blew the electrics. This is precisely what you would expect to happen if you lived and worked in the Wess Curntry, but the namby-pamby London folk had been hoping for something a little more luxurious. I remember with nostalgic fondness the year that I invigilated the EQEs at Ashton Gate. I handed out chocolate mini-eggs and Morris-danced in the aisles, and the temperature was Just Right and the lighting was Just Right and the only thing the candidates had to worry about was the invigilators being asleep when you ran out of paper. Oh, and the Morris dancing of course. This halcyon experience took place before Ashton Gate Stadium underwent extensive refurbishment. The purpose of the extensive refurbishment seems to have been to render the indoor spaces more like outdoor spaces, which is nice if you want a picnic but not so good if you want somewhere to sit very still at a desk being scared witless for five hours in a row. I think the EyeEyePeePee and the Onssek are a little bit cross about this. So is Mr Davies, whose friend I am supposed to be, but he really shouldn’t look at me as if it were my fault. Not everything in Brizzle is my fault. Not everything in CIPA is my fault either. Although a lot of it is. 3 March 2016, 12.30 pm
Now I am having lunch with Mr Roberts and the lovely man from Queen Mary College and the lovely man’s best mate, who runs the Certificate in IP Law course. This is highlight number two of the day. The lovely man and his mate know a lovely restaurant at which they are so well-known that the waitress writes their order before they’ve even looked at the lovely menu. This puts me at a bit of a disadvantage, but it doesn’t stop me talking about all sorts of mad-cap schemes. I am truly in blue-sky mode at the moment. I give up trying to read the menu and ask the waitress for the goat’s cheese followed by the duck breast. There is always something with goat’s cheese on a starter menu and there is usually something with duck breast in the main courses, so it’s worth taking a punt. The waitress seems happy enough. We talk about training the patent attorneys of the future. Then we drift on to talking about the future more generally, which is right up Mr Roberts’s street because he loves making things up. When we have done with the future, he brings us back down to earth by telling us about The Black EyePees, which is a band he put together for a CIPA Battle of the Bands once and then forgot to dismantle afterwards, so that it has gone on and on shouting at CIPA members to music ever since. Mr Davies has booked The Black EyePees for our 125th Charter Anniversary Gala Dinner in July. This is going to be an extremely dignified and stately affair, apart from the after-dinner entertainment, which will be lots of shouting to music. 3 March 2016, 10.30 am
My first meeting this morning is with a group of HR managers who want to talk about diversity. They also want to share a large box of pastries. This is highlight number one of the day. I am hopeful there will be more. I am interested to hear their thoughts about staff retention, in particular patent attorneyette retention, and how you persuade people to come back to work when they’ve taken time out to dabble in a bit of child care. This is quite hard to do, because they will have got used to enjoying getting up in the morning. So you have to be prepared to offer all sorts of sweeteners like part-time working and remote working and never having to worry about becoming senior partner. And to add insult to injury, you have to help them get their clients back from the people who have not taken time off and been quite enjoying the increased billing figures thank you. It is all very complicated. 2 March 2016, 2.30 pm
The final highlight of the day is the March Council meeting. This is my last-but-two time in the chair (not that I am counting). The chances of a vote of no confidence are now diminishing, because it would take at least a month for Council to reach a conclusion on something that momentous, and another month to work out how to implement it. So I can be even fiercer than normal if I want to. I am fierce about our discussions on Brexit, because Mr Lampert says we have to have an Official CIPA Position and an Official Position is not supposed to be prefaced with two pages of caveats. I am fierce about regulation, because it is traditional to be fierce about regulation at CIPA, and then Mr Davies reminds me of the several regulatory issues I have forgotten to mention which rather takes the sting out of the fierceness. Then I am fierce with someone who wants to re-open the blue-sky discussions about the CIPA premises: I say Mr Davies is going to write up the EyePeePee’s flip chart notes and that will have to do you. The table that Mr Davies and I are sitting at cannot cope with all the fierceness. It develops an unfortunately-placed fulcrum and whenever either of us tries to write anything down, one corner of it nose-dives towards the floor, almost compromising my Red Bull® supply. This is a good excuse to stop writing. Mr Davies will have to compile the minutes from memory again. Since most people on Council are quite old and can’t even remember who they met three hours ago, and the people who aren’t old have better things to do with their lives than check minutes, he will get away with it. But I make a mental note to add to the blue-sky wish-list: there must be non-tipping tables in the meeting rooms. Or is that too much detail? 2 March 2016, noon
The next highlight is the not-a-Council-meeting of Council members to talk about what CIPA needs from its new premises. This is supposed to be what is popularly referred to, in management bollocks, as “blue-sky thinking”. Listen, I have told people in my briefing notes, this is how it is going to happen. We are not going to talk about operational details. Mr Davies will do the operational details. What we are going to talk about is a wish-list of functions that CIPA needs its premises to fulfil. Wherever its premises are. Whatever they cost. However many rooms they have and whatever colour the carpets. At Council we do not do detail; we do Strategy and Policy and high-level stuff. We do blue-sky thinking. The EyePeePee takes charge of the flip chart. Mr Davies kicks off the discussions. And we start talking about broadband upload speeds. No!! I say. Too much detail! We decide that above all, CIPA has to have premises in London. After that, we get a bit lost. People who work in London get very precious about which street we are on. People like me, who have to travel in from the Back of Beyond, and for whom one London street looks pretty much like another, find this exasperating. Frankly, I am not worried if 100 patent attorneys have to walk for ten minutes instead of five to reach a CIPA Happy Hour because it is in Street X, which takes me four hours to get to, rather than Street Y, which takes me 3 hours 55 minutes to get to. We move on from the location debate by agreeing that CIPA needs to have premises in an “accessible” part of London. In management bollocks, this is called a “high-level” criterion. In real terms, it is called a Fudge. I will leave it to someone else to define whether “accessible” means Zone 1 or “inside the Circle Line” or “not far to walk from where my office is at the moment”. I suspect this will all be a little academic anyway, because it will cost three times as much to have premises where we want to be as it will to have premises ten minutes up the road. And anyway, the main limiting factor – and this is right at the top of the wish-list – is that there has to be a wall big enough to take the board of Past Presidents and another big enough to take the CIPA crest, and a third big enough to take the framed photograph of Mr Davies’s ego when he was President of the Chartered Institute of Hot & Cold Running Water Experts. Oh, and somewhere to put The Queen: a cupboard or a basement or something. Although if there is a Brexit, I suppose we might need The Queen more. These are some of the other blue-sky things we put on our premises wish-list:
By the end of the meeting, the flip chart is full of blue-sky thinking, plus one or two rain clouds, and I have eaten six bits of quiche, three inches of cucumber and enough cakey bits to last me till, er, later. Wherever we end up, we will have to be able to get cakey bits there. 2 March 2016, 10 am
The first highlight of today is Mr Poore’s jumper. Mr Poore is the Journal Editor, a member of Council, a past President of CIPA, a barrister, a solicitor, a patent attorney and the stand-in for the Chair of the Congress Steering Committee. But he has no taste in jumpers. The proper Chair cannot fulfil his duties because he is on holiday this year. Apparently that is what retired patent attorneys do. I seem to be getting this bit wrong. But then I got things wrong before I retired too, so I guess the writing was on the wall from the start. We hold the meeting as planned but try to avert our gazes from Mr Poore’s jumper, which is distracting because it looks like someone has ironed a stick of rock onto him and a patent attorney should not look like an ironed stick of rock. Still, I am encouraged to see that Past Presidents do not have to be dignified for the rest of their lives. I am so looking forward to testing this for myself. 1 March 2016, 5 pm
The IP attachés arrive at CIPA Hall to tell us what is happening in China, India, Brazil and South-East Asia. The attaché from WIPO, who is actually a spy, is also there, and he tells us what is happening at WIPO, which is mainly that people are playing the Don’t Stop Talking game. And spying on each other. (But we are not supposed to know about the spying. It is a Secret.) I am chairing this meeting because the real chair, who is in charge at the IP Awareness Network, has been delayed. I do the “lite” version of chairing. I say Hello everyone, welcome, here are the IP attachés, and now I am going to hand over to them to tell you what they do. And afterwards I say Thank you attachés, and thank you everyone for being here, and for your wonderful questions, especially the one about Brexit that made all the attachés (who are government employees) squirm in their seats. And now please come and have a drink with us. Melissa and Gary have put out the drinks and Gary has volunteered, through the medium of his instructions from Mr Davies, to stay as long as you want and lock up after you’ve gone. He is not called Unlucky Gary for nothing. |
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