21 March 2016, 8 am
I am sponsoring a meeting. This means that it was my stupid idea to hold the meeting and now I have to take responsibility. It absolutely does not mean that I am going to shell out £1 for every agenda item covered, or that I am paying for the drinks. The meeting is between CIPA, ITMA and IPReg; it is to discuss the challenges and opportunities faced by the IP professions and what we can do about them. The idea that we might all work together in this way is pretty revolutionary, so I think my namby-pambiness is starting to catch on. Indeed, there are reports that the meeting will involve flip charts and people sitting in a circle rather than round a table (tables are such a barrier when it comes to brainstorming, darlings!). This is namby-pambiness of a whole new order. It is, I feel, the beginnings of a Regulatory Sandbox, which the Legal Services Board will surely approve of. I will not be at the meeting myself, so I hope the Pixies remember the sweets and biscuits that such an occasion demands. Maybe buckets and spades as well, in the context. Meanwhile, as Sponsor I must devise questions for people to discuss. I go for the straightforward approach:
The whole venture is a bit of a gamble, I concede. I am worried that because I am not there in person, people might forget to be namby-pamby and instead get a bit serious. On the other hand, Mr Davies will be there, and Mr Davies is incapable of being serious in the presence of a flip chart. They will have to report back to the Sponsor. I will be checking that the report contains an appropriate amount of frivolity.
0 Comments
19 March 2016
“Thank you for shopping with Intellectual Property Regulation Board Limited.” This has to be one of the most bizarre payment confirmations that’s ever landed in my inbox. I do not generally think of paying my IPReg practice fee as a shopping experience. Will I shortly be sent a dispatch note, followed by a request for customer feedback? Are there other things I could have added to my IPReg shopping basket: souvenir CPD logs, for instance, or ABS badges saying “Hip HoLP” and “I’m a Happy HoFA”? I wish I felt as good about this purchase as I do when I buy a book or a whisky or a new crumpled outfit. But the fact is, there are some things you just have to do, like paying your road tax or your TV licence fee, and putting them on the credit card doesn’t make them any more of a spree at the mall than they were when you had to take a cheque to the post office. Ah well. The fee is paid. Now I am a proper, regulated Pee and you are all protected from my incompetence and inappropriate conduct. And if I publish now, I really will be damned. 17 March 2016, 10 pm
In Cheltenham, we collect a platform-full of race goers and St Patrick’s Day hats. This lowers the specific gravity of the carriage considerably, which you might have thought would speed our progress towards Brizzle. Sadly not. The train battles on, through an alcoholic fug, like it is struggling across St Patrick’s own peat bog. The closer we get to Brizzle, the louder and more animated the hats become. “At-seat trolleyed” would be an appropriate term. This is worse than the midnight train to Swansea. My own sense of humour, last seen over a collapsing canapé in Yorkshire, does not extend to in-carriage entertainment and I suspect the revellers can tell this. I am mightily glad when I can grab my suitcase and leave. 17 March 2016, 9 pm
But it is a long train journey, Leeds to Brizzle. I have been away from home since 6 am Tuesday, and I am more than ready to be back there. Even though the kids don’t appreciate me and the cat shows me its bottom, and the broadband is not broad at all and the smell of rotting apples lurks in every gateway. I like it there. I like that there’s room for everyone and a bit to spare, unlike London where there’s room for only half of you but no one’s prepared to be the half that gives up and leaves. Back home, I have a husband. Or at least, I did the last time I looked. He keeps a photo of me, so as not to mistake me for an imposter when I come home late. Now and then, he shows the photo to the children, saying, “This is your mother. If you come across her any time, you are entitled to ask her for pocket money.” Without my husband, I would be an even rubbisher Pee than I am now. He does all the shopping. He assembles the shopping into meal events: there is always a meal event awaiting my return. He organises my dry cleaning, and is now so well known at the dry cleaners that they’re convinced he leads a double life as a crumpled business woman. He chauffeurs the children to, oh, I don’t know, the kinds of places children need to go to – school and stuff. In the mornings he lets the cat in and puts the bins out; in the evenings the reverse. He tops up the Red Bull® supplies. He does a thousand and one jobs and errands to keep the household functioning, nine hundred of which I didn’t even know needed doing. He is, basically, the Everything You Need Pixies. And the best thing is, he does all this with a flatline temperament, which is the perfect foil for a basket-case like me. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t weep. He has underactive panic and flap glands. When he sees me doing these things – shouting, weeping, panicking, flapping – he observes with a kind of benevolent bewilderment, and then gets on with assembling the meal event until I’ve shut up. Without this lovely, kind, patient man, I would be malnourished, ill-laundered and unable to get to London on bin day. My children would be malnourished and uneducated. The cat would have gone to show the neighbours its bottom instead. And CIPA wouldn’t have had half such an exciting year. So right now, on my way back home again at last, I am thinking just how important he is. And also hoping he will help sort my laptop. 17 March 2016, 5.30 pm
Drinks and canapés follow. In Yorkshire they don’t even bother disguising the party as an OGM; they just get straight in with the drinking. Well why not? We have consumed an awful lot of CPD today; we kind of need to wash it down. This, I think, is audience participation at its best. By the time I leave for a train back to Brizzle, I am full of Presidential bonhomie. And gin. 17 March 2016, mid-day
The sun is shining in Dark Satanic Leeds. A perfect day to be sitting in a dingy room indulging a CPD fetish. The first session is about the UP and UPC. It is a double act. Our two speakers swap places every couple of slides, and sometimes they talk to one another’s slides by mistake, and sometimes they appear surprised that their turn has come round again so quickly, but overall it is a most engaging presentation format and I think it should be encouraged. One speaker can be deathly dull; two speakers plus a bit of rapport, plus a bit of under-rehearsed but energetic bobbing up and down, can turn a CPD ordeal into a spectacle. And as far as I can tell, there is nothing in the IPReg Code to say that CPD points are less valid if they are combined with a little entertainment. The speakers also require some audience participation, something which has become suspiciously popular at recent Yorkshire events. They provide us with a case study to discuss. At this point I discover I have some urgent Presidential emails to check, because I do not want people to find out that their President no longer has the slightest clue what to do with a patent case study. I return in plenty of time to announce the tea break, though, which I believe is the main reason for the President being at these events. After the tea break, we hear a talk from a tax advisor. It is about the Patent Box. The Patent Box has always been a teeny-weeny bit complicated, but soon it is going to get hugely-wugely complicated. It will become necessary to apply something called a Nexus Fraction to your Patent Box tax relief, and this you do by plucking several random figures out of your corporate accounts – some of which you will have to make up because you will have forgotten to write them down as you went along – and slotting them into the most eye-watering piece of algebra I’ve seen for some time. If you did not do further maths at A-level you are going to be seriously unhappy by this point, but when you realise that the only possible outcome of the algebra is a number less than one, and that this is the multiplier for your Patent Box relief, you will be even more unhappy. And then you will remember that you’ve paid an accountant many pounds to come up with this multiplier, thus obliterating even more of your profits, and you will be consumed with fury. Our final speaker tells us about IP insurance. Even if you did further maths to PhD level, there is no algebra in the world clever enough to calculate the risks that stem from IP litigation. So you might as well apply the Nexus Fraction here as well. There are a hundred and one ways to obliterate your profits: IP litigation and Nexus Fractions are only two of them. 17 March 2016, 10 am
Today I am heading to the Dark Satanic North for the annual Yorkshire meeting. The train is miserably coffee-stained and embellished with chewing gum remnants and muffin crumbs. Unlucky Gary has reserved me a seat in the middle of the chewing gum remnants. The lady in front talks incessantly all the way to Doncaster. Her life story is not that interesting but her voice is not that unpleasant either; the net result is to send me soundly to sleep. I am supposed to be writing the minutes from last Thursday’s round-table, but my notes are all about the new coffee machine and I cannot summon the energy required to make sense of them. I am fed up with meetings anyway, not to mention the products thereof, which mainly involve me writing about stuff which I will then have to bust a gut to make happen. I figure that if I am late writing the minutes, then I will have delayed the point at which I have to start following up on them. This will be easier for everyone, but especially me. It’s my guess that very few people will notice. Anyway I have broken my laptop screen, by allowing my rucksack to fall from a great height propelled by a dodgy hook on the wall of the ladies’ toilets at King’s Cross. I am left with only two-thirds of a screen, so am limited to doing two-thirds of my work. If this sounds a little like a dog-ate-my-homework excuse, it is not intended to. 16 March 2016, 8 pm
ITMA have invited me to their pre-conference drinks. Again I am taking my Presidential duties very seriously and throwing myself into the event with gusto. The ITMA people ply me with alcohol, and then ask me how it feels to be nearing the end of my Presidential term. The alcohol tells me it’s OK to be honest about this. So I explain about my bucket list and about looking forward to the day when I can publish and be damned. They look a little nervous. This diary of yours, they say, do you mention any, er, ITMA people in it? I tell them that I have learnt a lot from being President, but that I don’t think any of it would count as “transferable”, because it is mainly about patent attorneys and how to get the better of them. Ah yes, patent attorneys, they say. Tell us, why are patent attorneys always so bad-tempered? I tell them to shut up and leave me alone. 16 March 2016, 3 pm
Back at CIPA HQ, where it’s all happening, Mr Lampert and I are finalising our letter to The Queen. He takes a photograph of me signing it, because this is such a momentous event in my life. The last time I wrote to The Queen, I was eight years old. With my mum’s full encouragement – nay, incitement – I invited Her for tea, and also offered to take Her to the cinema afterwards, because in our house that was what you did if Very Special Friends came round, and I wanted The Queen to know she was Very Special. I received a charming reply from Her Majesty’s Private Secretary, but unfortunately HM was too busy to take me up on my offer. I hope the CIPA invitation yields a better response. At 4 pm I attend a meeting of the IP Awareness Network, and hear a talk by the IPO’s Chief Economist. It is her job to draw pie charts about IP things. They have to be big pie charts, and colourful, so that politicians can understand them. She says she wants to hear our suggestions for IP things she can draw pie charts about. I refrain from suggesting levels of IP awareness among politicians, which I estimate would yield a three-slice pie chart for Never heard of IP (97%); Heard of IP but thinks it’s a synonym for copyright (3%); and Totally gets what IP is about (trace). Still, the IP Awareness Network will shortly be hosting a party at the Houses of Parliament, to mark World IP Day. Probably if there is a party involved, more of the politicians might be persuaded to Totally Get what IP is About. There is nothing like a party to raise awareness. 16 March 2016, 11 am
I do some floor cleaning at the flat. Floor cleaning is a most satisfying form of procrastination. Until, that is, you forget and walk over the newly-moistened floor in your only clean pair of socks, thus rendering them squelchy for the rest of the day. Rats! 16 March 2016, 1 pm I squelch my way to a meeting at the Ministry of Justice. Mr Davies and Mr Dixon are also there, but they are not squelching. Mr Dixon is a bit of a guru on things relating to regulation, having fallen out with IPReg more times than any of us, and today’s meeting is about regulation and What To Do About It. We are going to struggle to shut Mr Dixon up, I suspect. Security is tight at the MoJ. They need proof of ID for the squelchy person Mr Davies has brought with him. Then we have to stand, one at a time, in a sealed tube, while the MoJ decides whether to vapourise us on the spot, teleport us to somewhere more useful or allow us through for the meeting we’ve been invited to. Luckily, we all get through. In the meeting, the MoJ tell us that they will be consulting with stakeholders about the regulatory landscape and they would very much like to hear our views. So Mr Dixon tells them our views. They are very clear views. Or at least, they are the way Mr Dixon tells them. I am glad it is him talking, not me, because I would make CIPA sound half-hearted, like we were still thinking or something. Instead, I am in “listening mode”, which is a euphemism for “Can’t think of anything useful to contribute” or “Has no idea what’s going on here” or “Can’t get a word in edgeways”, and also is management bollocks. |
Archives
July 2019
Categories |