25 June 2015, 2.30 pm
The Manchester regional seminar is mostly about the UPC. Apart from the bits I say in between, which are mostly rubbish. One of the UPC talks includes real, live play acting by five plucky volunteers, who read out bits of dialogue from a recent mock trial. Their roles are: an erudite UPC judge; a grumpy UPC rapporteur; two patent attorneys representing the plaintiff; and an outraged patent attorney representing the defendant. This is a great way to bring the UPC to life. Many in the room begin to realise that actually this is something they could do too. Acting, that is. Another of the talks is about inter partes review and post-grant review in the United States. The IPR process is remarkably similar to that of a UPC action, except that in the US the tribunal has about a year to decide on validity whereas in Europe it will have about a year to decide on validity, infringement, entitlement and anything else that gets thrown at it. Our US speaker feels the Europeans may be a little optimistic. Presumably the Europeans feel the Americans are a little inefficient. However, it has to be said that the Americans are already achieving what they promised, whereas the Europeans have been talking about a unitary patent since the early 1960s and have only just got round to arguing about renewal fees. And with classic timing, of course, the UK is now considering leaving the EU anyway. Our final talk is not about the UPC at all. It is about how to get more out of your business development activities. Some people in the audience did not even know they were supposed to do business development activities. So we are a little nervous. The speaker, who likes to use props, has cut a lemon in half. He demonstrates how you can squeeze a lemon to get more juice out of it. Then he says you can squeeze your contacts to get more business out of them. Ouch. And if you do not squeeze them right, I think, they will make your eyes water. The speaker says the best way to network is just to be yourself. I am not sure this is entirely true in the case of patent attorneys. For the final twenty minutes, I am distracted by the sight of two halves of lemon sitting next to me on the table. It is getting close to happy hour and I cannot stop thinking about how nicely they would go with a gin or two.
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