CIPA JOURNAL Incorporating the transactions of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys
June 2017 / Volume 46 / Number 6
PEB Examinations Report of the 2016 Qualifying Examination Candidate Survey and the PEB's response
The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys
Professional development framework for CPAs
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IPO formalities and register administration Glenn Rose’Meyer
US update: PTAB “reversals” and patent quality Finnegan
Building the UK's Industrial Strategy CIPA’s response
The not-so-secret diary of a CIPA President Andrea Brewster
02/06/2017 18:49:14
We are fast becoming the market leader... ...which is why we have been appointed to exclusively partner with a number of companies in their search for talent
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Contents 27-35 14-25
14
UP FRONT
ARTICLES
EDUCATION
3
27
54 51
Institute events UP and UPC webinars
54 60
Institute events Life Sciences Conference
Education update
Georgina Sear 4
Timothy P. McAnulty and Kevin D. Rodkey
Chief Executive’s report
Lee Davies 6
Council Minutes
US update: insight on PTAB “reversals”
33
Lee Davies
US update: enhanced patent quality initiatives
Jessica L.A. Marks and Timothy P. McAnulty
NEWS
56
5
59
PERSONAL
The not-so-secret diary
Andrea Brewster SIPO – accelerated patent examination
Pippa Allen
You are never alone
Lee Davies
40 58 61
Patents Committee 11
16 18 24
DECISIONS
Education & Professional Standards Committee
44
THE PINKS
Constitution of the PEB Qualifying Examinations
49
Candidate Survey Report
50
Announcements Letter to the Editor
Professional Development
Foundation Certificate Exams
EPO decisions
Bristows Patent decisions
Beck Greener IPO decisions
Barker Brettell
Qualifying Examinations
PEB Response to Survey 25
Heather Lane 62 62
Building our Industrial Strategy
CIPA’s response to Green Paper 14
CITMA Summer Reception A Night in Neverland Going Remote
52
Trade marks and other IP
63 64 67 68
Recruitment Courses and events International Announcements
Bird & Bird
Georgina Sear 26
IPO formalities and register administration
Glenn Rose’Meyer
Volume 46, number 6
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NEWS
PEB
PEB Qualifying Examinations 2016 Examinations Candidate Survey Report. See the PEB's response on page 24.
Introduction
Profile of participants
This report consolidates responses to an online survey conducted in December 2016, which sought feedback from candidates about the content of the PEB Qualifying Examinations and the usefulness of the preparation material. 227 respondents completed the survey. Please note the PEB has published a response to the points raised in this survey. Many candidates said that they found the past question papers, mark schemes and examiners’ reports helpful in preparing for the examinations. The survey also revealed:
The majority of candidates were male (63%), aged 25-34 (71%) and white (84%).
•
•
•
Concerns about some examinations, particularly FC2 and FD4 exams. These were criticised for having too much material to cover in the time, too much reliance on memorising obscure content, lack of relevance to professional work and inconsistent marking schemes.
What is your gender?
Female
35% 63%
Prefer ŶŽƚ ƚŽ ƐĂ
What is your age group? 24 or ƵŶĚĞƌ
4% 9%
Examination resitting, 21% of candidates were re-sitting the FD4 examination, with 28 candidates (13%) having taken the examination more than three times.
16% 25 Ͳ 34
Issues with venues, which candidates felt had impacted on their performance.
35 Ͳ 44 71%
Comments included: “The P2 [FD1] examination is a lottery, as the syllabus is poorly defined and there are instances of questions coming up that have no bearing on the material that should have been covered.” “The results from FD4 (P6) do not appear to reflect the abilities of the candidates. It is commonly accepted that perfectly capable attorneys can fail P6 multiple times. Having to resit a paper when you are capable of doing the job is incredibly frustrating, holds back career progression and can have effects on personal life choices. Therefore, I think that the P6 examination needs careful attention.”
1%
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0%
5%
5%
White Irish Any Other White ďĂĐŬŐƌŽƵŶĚ
6%
Asian or Asian British Black or Black British 76% Chinese Prefer not to say
• • • JUNE 2017
White British
3%
Further comments from candidates are included in this report.
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What is your ethnic origin? 4%
18
Male
2%
92% spoke English as their first language. 8% (18) of respondents said English was not their first language. 1% (3) of respondents stated that they had some form of mental or physical disability and 4.5% (10) preferred not to say. www.cipa.org.uk
02/06/2017 17:50:46
NEWS
PEB
Professional background
Examinations taken
Physics was the most common disciplinary background for candidates, with over one-third of respondents selecting this option (36%, 80 respondents).
The largest number of candidates taking the survey had registered for the FD4 (63%) and FD1 (52%) examinations in 2016.
What is your disciplinary background?
Which examinations were you registered for?62.6% 52.4% 33.5% 11.9%
12.3%
11.5%
16.7%
14.1%
26.9%
FC1 (P1) FC2 (Law) FC3 (P5) FC4 (D&C) FC5 (P7) FD1 (P2) FD2 (P3) FD3 (P4) FD4 (P6)
• •
The majority of candidates (60%) have between two and five years’ experience in the patent profession.
30% (68) of candidates said they were taking the FD4 examination for the first time. 21% (47) of respondents had taken the examination more than once before. 5% (12) of candidates had taken the examination more than four times.
How many times have you taken the FD4 examination?
How long have you been working in the patent profession?
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dǁŝĐĞ
ϰϵй 17%
32%
• •
23%
dŚƌĞĞ ƚŝŵĞƐ &ŽƵƌ Žƌ ŵŽƌĞ ƚŝŵĞƐ
ϯϬй
28%
Less than 2 years
More than 3 years but less than 5 years
Between 2 and 3 years
5 years or more
Most candidates work in a private practice (89%, 201 candidates) and 9% (20) work in industry. 64% (144) of respondents work in organisations of between 50 and 249 employees and 18% (41) work in companies with more than 249 employees.
Volume 46, number 6
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NEWS
OFFICIAL
IPO formalities and register administration Guidance from the IPO to help tackle recurring issues with documents, forms and evidence filed at the IPO that cause delays in processing.
A
t the IPO, we are always looking for ways to improve our services and efficiency. High levels of work are experienced by a number of areas of the IPO, particularly at busy times of the year. A few simple steps can help to speed up processing, reduce backlogs and minimise unnecessary queries. Please note that if we have to raise a query, any updated/corrected version filed with us will likely not be processed immediately. Here are a few suggestions covering the main work areas which will help our teams to process your work.
Initial filing Always use the electronic filing option where it is available if possible, especially for initial filings. However, while we are still developing further digital services, please do not upload items such as withdrawal letters (see below) and those forms that are not available in electronic format. Please note that forms which are fee bearing cannot be processed.
Amended applications If you make amendments to an application, please file the full formal amended description and/or claims (instead of individually amended pages), as well as tracked changes for the amended pages. This significantly reduces the amount of time it takes for our formalities teams to process an amended application when it is filed at the IPO.
Register maintenance Our Register Maintenance team receives a high volume of work and pendency times are longer than we would like. Please bear with us while we strive to improve this, but, to assist with speedier processing, we would suggest the following: •
Formalities Drawings: coloured drawings are currently not acceptable and that an objection will be raised at Preliminary Examination until the position changes. • E-mail addresses: we have two dedicated e-mail addresses which are monitored by staff throughout the day; in order to make the most efficient use of these, please use them for their dedicated purposes only: •
•
pateot@ipo.gov.uk should only be used to request the first automatic extension of time under rule 109. Please do not use this route to file Form 52 or Form 14. withdraw@ipo.gov.uk is the most efficient and reliable way to withdraw an application as requests are continuously monitored. We cannot guarantee the same level of monitoring for withdrawal requests filed by other means.
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•
Requirement to supply evidence when recorded as Address for Service There is no requirement for supplying evidence (except in the case of a death which requires a copy of the death certificate, will and/or probate), because we will use the information supplied on the form to update the Register. If evidence is supplied and this evidence conflicts with the information on the form, this will usually result in a query. Difference in address or date detail The address of the Applicant/ Proprietor on the Register must mirror the address on the Form 21 and any submitted evidence, otherwise this will be queried. If the address differs please confirm in a covering letter what the actual address was at the time of the transaction. Similarly, the date of the transaction on the Form 21 should match the date on any evidence. Please check dates are in order before filing forms. Schedules of mixed EP/GB cases In the past, GB/EP cases have been easily distinguishable by number, but we are now in a situation where the
•
•
EP case numbers have over taken the GB case numbers – there are now many cases that share the same number, but with a different prefix. These create significant problems that can result in errors when recording updates on the Register and which are difficult to rectify. Please always use the relevant prefix and supply clear EP and GB schedules. If you wish, you may use the schedule template available here: https://www.gov.uk/ government/publications/applicationto-register-or-give-notice-of-rights Clarity regarding Change of Name or Change of Legal Entity Many Form 20s are filed requesting a change of name when in fact there has been a change of legal entity (e.g. Inc. to LLC), which has to be recorded on a Form 21. Poor-quality photocopied fax copies Please ensure any fax filed documents are of a good quality before sending them. If the documents are illegible in part or in full, we will need to request a clean copy and this again causes a delay.
If you have any queries about any of the issues I mention above or indeed any others, please do not hesitate to contact us using the details below. • Initial filing – Lyndon Davies – Head of Patent Admin Support Services – 01633 814604 – lyndon.davies@ipo.gov.uk • Formalities – Steve Bender – Head of Administration – 01633 814422 – steve.bender@ipo.gov.uk • Register Maintenance – Christine Farrington – Head of Register Services – 01633-814701 – christine.farrington@ipo.gov.uk Glenn Rose’Meyer, Divisional Head of Administration, Business Operations Division, Intellectual Property Office www.cipa.org.uk
02/06/2017 17:51:17
US UPDATE
PTAB
Insight on Patent Trial and Appeal Board “Reversals” Post-grant proceedings include two primary decisions by the Board: Institution, when the Board determines if a petitioner is likely to prevail on the merits in a full proceeding, and Final Decision, when the Board determines if the petitioner has shown the claims are unpatentable. The Finnegan team surveys the Board’s final written decisions issued during the first quarter of 2017 to determine how often and why the Board “reverses” its institution decision.
J
ust over four-and-a-half years ago, the America Invents Act (AIA) created post-grant proceedings at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which created an alternative path to challenge the validity of patents. These proceedings have become very popular, with over 5,000 challenges filed since they became available. Although three separate post-grant review proceedings were created under the AIA – IPR, CBM, and PGR1 – they all have common procedural features. We have discussed the details of the various procedures in several earlier CIPA Journal articles, but all post-grant proceedings can generally be divided into two phases: pre-institution and post-institution. The pre-institution phase begins when a petitioner files a petition challenging the validity of at least one claim of a patent2. The patent owner has the option to file a preliminary response and explain why a proceeding should not be instituted, whether on procedural or substantive grounds3. A panel of three administrative patent judges (Board) then reviews the petition and preliminary response and issues an institution decision either granting or denying institution based on whether the petitioner has sufficiently shown that it is likely to prevail on the merits at final written decision4. Post-institution, the patent owner may object to a petitioner’s evidence, cross-examine petitioner’s expert witnesses, file additional expert testimony supporting patentability, and file a patent owner response rebutting the petitioner’s arguments. After the Board holds an oral hearing, it issues a final written decision and determines whether the challenged claims are patentable5. The distinction between pre-institution denials and a final written decision post-institution is significant. For example, Volume 46, number 6
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when the Board issues a final written decision, the AIA’s estoppel provisions attach and the petitioner is precluded from arguing at district court or at the USPTO that the claims decided in the final written decision are unpatentable on various grounds6. This estoppel does not attach if the Board denies institution. When a Board institutes a proceeding, it also increases a petitioner’s ability to obtain a stay of a co-pending litigation, which will delay trial and a potential judgment on infringement and damages until after patentability is resolved at the USPTO. While an ultimate finding of unpatentability by the Board could moot the litigation, a finding of patentability can simplify the issues at trial by removing certain defenses. A finding of patentability in a final written decision can therefore have a significant impact on corresponding litigations. This article surveys the Board’s final written decisions issued during the first quarter of 2017 to determine trends in why the Board “reverses” its initial institution decision, where it found a petitioner likely to show at least one claim unpatentable at institution, yet found that the petitioner failed to make the required showing that the challenged claims are unpatentable at final written decision.
Methodology Copies of the 193 final written decisions issued between 1 January and 11 April 2017, were pulled using Docket Navigator7. These decisions were reviewed to determine whether the final written decision found one or more claims patentable. Decisions finding at least one claim patentable were analyzed to determine the reason the Board found the claim patentable and categorized into groups, as discussed below. JUNE 2017
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CPD & EDUCATION
INSTITUTE EVENTS
Institute Events For more information and to book onto any event please see the CIPA website or email cpd@cipa.org.uk Tuesday, 13 June 2017 Webinar
UK Patent case-law update Time: 12.30–13.30 Join speakers Jon Markham (Beck Greener) and James Porter (IPO) for this CPD webinar that will focus on interesting patent decisions to have come from the UK courts and the Comptroller over the past 12 months. If you are a delegate from outside of the UK, please email cpd@cipa.org.uk for a non-VAT booking. CPD: 1; Prices: £72 (members £48)
in the US • Update on Supreme Court Decisions; Patents – Venue Reform • After final practice • Best practice and pitfalls in claiming priority • Update on Designs and Design Damages in the US. Students, members of FICPI-UK and CITMA please email cpd@cipa.org.uk to book onto this Seminar. Student members attend for FREE. CPD: 3.5; Prices: £126 (members £84)
Following the success of last years diversity breakfast, we are proud to again bring you this joint breakfast meeting. An excellent chance to listen to talks on diversity from various institutes within the IP world. This event is FREE for members and non-members alike but space is limited. Members please book online. Nonmembers please email cpd@cipa.org.uk
Time: 08.00–17.00 Location: Hallam Conference Centre, 44 Hallam Street, London, W1W 6JJ Our course is in two parts. The first is a remote learning module, in the form of prerecorded webinars and an accompanying printed training manual. This part can be completed any time within a two-month window, at the student’s convenience. The second part is a one-day workshop which will take place in London on Monday, 19 June 2017. The workshop includes two mock hearings, one before an “examining division” and one before an “opposition division”. Contact cpd@cipa.org.uk. Price: £468
Friday, 16 June 2017 Seminar
US IP Law and Practice Time: 13.30–17.00 Location: Holborn Bars – DeVere, 138-142 Holborn, London, EC1N 2NQ Join us for the joint CPD seminar on US IP Law and Practice. You can expect topics to include: Trade marks – Top Ten Tips and Tricks to Consider When Filing
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Time: 12.30–18.30 Location: Marriott Breadsall Priory, Marriott Breadsall Priory, Moor Road, Morley, DE7 6DL Do not miss out on a opportunity to pick up CPD points as well the chance to network with other IP professionals in the region. CPD: 3.5; Prices: £234 (members £156)
Diversity in IP Breakfast Meeting Time: 8.15–09.45 Location: Holborn Bars – DeVere, 138-142 Holborn, London, EC1N 2NQ
East Midlands Meeting 2017
Monday, 19 June 2017 Seminar
EPO Oral Proceedings 2017 Friday, 16 June 2017 Seminar
Thursday, 22 June 2017 Seminar
Tuesday, 20 June 2017 Webinar
How to liaise with in-house attorneys: life on the inside Time: 12.30–13.30 David Galaun from Cisco Systems on what it is like to work as an in-house attorney at a large tech company. CPD: 1; Prices: £72 (members £48)
Thursday, 22 June 2017 Webinar
Russia/ Eurasia update Time: 12.30–13.30 This webinar will focus on: Trade marks in Russia – special aspects • Landmarks in last practice of the Russian Patent Office after adoption of the new Russian Patent Law • PPH programme – how it can be used to an applicant’s advantage • Changes in the Russian pharmaceutical patent landscape. CPD: 1; Prices: £72 (members £48)
Wednesday, 28 June 2017 Webinar
The UP/UPC series: getting legal with the UP and how to get it Time: 12.30–13.30 Join us for another webinar in the UP/UPC Series: This webinar will cover: Regulations, rules, registers and more • Designated states, texts, translations • Delaying grant and strategy options. Speaker: Chris Mercer, CIPA Honarary Member and EPI Past President CPD: 1; Prices: £72 (members £48) www.cipa.org.uk
02/06/2017 18:00:59
CPD & EDUCATION
INSTITUTE EVENTS
Monday, 3 July 2017 Webinar
The New Law on Unjustified Threats Time: 12.30–13.30 Join our speakers Rob Jackson (Dehns) and James Porter (Deputy Director of Patents at IPO) for a look at the new provisions on threats. CPD: 1; Prices: £72 (members £48)
Wednesday, 5 July 2017 Webinar
Professional Ethics Time: 12.30–13.30 A look at ethical best practice for UK patent and trade mark attorneys, who are subject the IPReg ‘Rules of conduct'. Many UK patent and trade mark attorneys are subject also to one or more of the following: the EPO Administrative Council's ‘Regulation on discipline'; the epi ‘Code of conduct'; and the SRA's ‘Solicitors' Code of Conduct'. A joint CIPA/CITMA webinar. CPD: 1; Prices: £72 (members £48)
Thursday, 13 July 2017 Webinar
Educating the Client Time: 12.30–13.30 This webinar will discuss how providing IP awareness training sessions to clients seems to be better than expecting clients to learn through routine casework. In this webinar, it is suggested that an audiencefocused approach (e.g. “legal-light” in the case of lay clients) allows such sessions to pay off not only for the client but also for the practitioner. CPD: 1; Prices: £72 (members £48)
Friday, 1 September 2017
W/C 4 September 2017
Litigation Skills Course Location: venue to be confirmed
Introductory Patent Administrators’ Course
Registration for this course opens on Monday 31 July and closes on Monday 21 August. The online course opens on Friday, 1 September and the faceto-face course takes place on 4 and 5 November. The examinations will take place in London as follows: the written examination on 16 November and the oral examinations w/c 13 November.
Registration for this course opens on Monday 15 May and closes on Monday 3 July. The mock examination will take place between 4 December 2017 and 12 January 2018 with final examinations taking place on Thursday 25 January 2018 at 2.00pm. Results are issued by email on Monday 5 March 2018.
To register go to www.cipa.org.uk/patent-examination-board
Wednesday 19 July 2017 Webinar
Assignments and Title Updates at the IPO
Congress 2017 Navigating to the future
Time: 12.30–13.30
Location: Glaziers Hall, London, SE1 9DD
Join speaker Roy Scott (Keltie) for this lunch time webinar that will cover how to review an assignment agreement to ensure that it contains the relevant information to enable the change of ownership to be recorded on the Register at the UKIPO.
Following the success of CIPA Congress 2016, the Congress Steering Committee is putting together a programme that will provide great CPD at an affordable price and high-quality speakers. See full programme online.
CPD: 1; Prices: £72 (members £48) This Webinar is FREE for Associate members of CIPA, please email cpd@cipa.org.uk to claim your free place
CPD: 8; Prices: starting at £200+VAT. E-mail cpd@cipa.org.ukfor details of rates.
Thursday, 28 September 2017 Conference Friday, 15 September 2017 Seminar
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CIPA Administrators Conference Building for the future…
How the drug discovery industry works
Location: Glaziers Hall, London, SE1 9DD
Time: 12.30–18.30 Location: CIPA, London
Book now to get your place at the Early Bird Rate – Limited time only! This conference will cover the following topics: PACE, Updates from the IPO, Copyright, Letter writing and effective communication to overseas attorneys, Trade Secrets.
Join our speaker Dr Ed Zanders (PharmaGuide) as he presents topics on the structure and commercial environment of the biopharmaceutical industry. CPD: 3.5; Prices: £234 (members £156)
Volume 46, number 6
Thursday, 28 September 2017 Conference
Prices: starting at £200+VAT. Please e-mail cpd@cipa.org.uk for details JUNE 2017
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2015
The not-so-secret diary of a CIPA President
By Andrea Brewster
It is already that time of year: the time when we invite new students to come and visit CIPA and subject them to an onslaught of lectures which are N OV supposed to reassure them but actually, I suspect, just terrify the pants off them.
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Our key messages are roughly thus: Me: Welcome to CIPA, which is lovely. We hope you make lots of friends today. You are going to need them. Speaker 1: You thought you’d chosen a job about science and law, because you like science and law, but actually it is about business. Here is lots of information about business assets and strategic planning and competitive advantage. If you do not understand this you will be a rubbish patent attorney even if you do pass all the exams. Which is not a given. Me: Be nice to your clients. They are human beings. If you think you’re scared, they are ten times more scared. Speaker 2: Let’s talk about professional ethics and the IPReg Code of Conduct. If you are not ethical, RUIN will surely follow and you will be cast out from this wonderful profession for ever and left in the gutter to rot. Your clients will regularly try to persuade you to be unethical in pursuit of better client relations and increased billing figures. Accede at your peril. Clients are human beings and in the context of professional ethics, this is not a plus. Also, never do anything you’re not competent to do, and in particular never do it for two different clients at once as this is called a Conflict of Interest and patent attorneys can die from Conflict of Interest. Me: There are lots of ways that clients can complain about you, and lots of reasons they might do so, especially if you refuse to be unethical on their behalf. Also you might make mistakes. So you must follow my simple 21-step process for handling complaints and mistakes, which will require you
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to devote the next 15 working days to the maintenance of a detailed complaints handling file. Speaker 3: As well as being brilliantly competent, commercially astute, ethical and also Nice To Your Clients, and in between handling complaints and mistakes using the correct 21-step process, you are also expected to make some profit for your employer. You make profit by convincing clients – ethically, of course – to send you lots more work, and then making sure they pay you for it, preferably without complaining. You can convince clients to send you more work by getting other people to tell them you are brilliant. However, you must also remember there is a Bribery Act 2010. If you do not make a profit, your employer will go bankrupt and you and your colleagues will be out on the streets with nothing but a Pot Noodle® for your Christmas dinner. (There follows a lunch break, in which the shell-shocked youngsters are allowed to weep on one another’s shoulders in despair. We remind them that phoning a recruitment agency at this point will be treated as a serious disciplinary offence.) Mr Davies: And now you are going to come up with ideas about what you need from your representative body, because CIPA is bored of thinking of things on its own. And please do not say counselling and hostels for people who would otherwise be on the streets because they have been unethical or incompetent. We are a close-knit community and we rally together to SHUN anyone who is unethical or incompetent in our midst. Speaker 4: Your career will be beset by stress. There are many signs that stress is developing, and you probably have all of them. The only way you can beat stress is by not doing so much work, but this will stress other people, especially the ones who have to do the stuff you don’t finish. When you get stressed, you should talk to someone about it. But the people you must not talk to about being stressed are your boss (who might fire you), someone you fancy (who might suggest inappropriate ways of reducing the stress) and your doctor (who might prescribe pills to calm you down, which could result in your becoming so laid-back that you stick two fingers up at the Code of Conduct and run off to become a hermit). www.cipa.org.uk
02/06/2017 18:01:26
Speaker 5: Here is how you qualify as a patent attorney. It is a long and arduous path. This, for instance, is a timeline showing how many years it will take. And here is a graph showing pass rates for the final exams. If you fail at the first attempt you are very likely to fail all subsequent resits so do not be tempted to sit the exams until you are absolutely sure you have no other options left. Speaker 6 (who is actually Mr Heap from IPReg, being interviewed in the style of a talk show): I cannot remember what is in the Code of Conduct but if you think it is “light touch” you have another think coming. It is actually “principles-based”, which means that it is up to you to decide what you have to do to comply with it, and up to us to tell you afterwards whether you decided right. This is because we know what patent attorneys are like: if you give them clear rules they will find the loopholes, and if you give them unclear rules they will complain under Article 84, so it is better not to give them rules at all. Me: So you see, it is a fantastic profession you have joined. You have a lot to look forward to. Please exchange business cards now because in ten years’ time many of the people you met today will be on the streets, or will be hermits, or will have retrained as stress counsellors, and in the latter case you might need to get back in touch.
Because I am now Important and A Little Bit Famous, I am going to be interviewed by a journalist. The journalist is very friendly and he N OV has brought a lady journalist along too, in case I start doing any girly things like crying or falling in love or rummaging in my handbag. He asks me what I have been doing in my time as President. Naturally I do not tell him the truth. Instead I tell him all the things I wanted to do, and all the things I have told other people I have done, and all the things I am just about to do, honest. The truth is, of course, that mostly I have been compiling a to-do list and every weekend I spend an hour thinking what an impressive set of plans I have and moving all the dates on by a month until eventually they end up in the period when someone else is Pee. The truth is that I have not had time to do many of the things on the to-do list, and the ones I have done have resulted in complaints. I tell the journalists that CIPA has been Engaging with its Stakeholders. This is what Mr Lampert told me to say. They ask Who are these Stakeholders that you have been Engaging with? I knew there was a reason I shouldn’t have said what Mr Lampert told me to. I say, They are the people we have been Reaching Out to, because CIPA is a Thought Leader and a Go-To Organisation and it will head up the Key Mindset-
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Changing Initiatives going forward. Shall we talk about diversity? So we do. And then the journalists ask if I think the professions will look different in ten years’ time. Mr Lampert did not tell me the answer to that one, so I guess it is a trick question. I say Of course they will look different. Absolutely they will look different. They’d better do.
Gathered at CIPA Hall is a roomful of patent and trade mark attorneys and IP solicitors. Plus two people from the IPO. Plus Mr Davies, who introduces himself NOV as the plumber who came four years ago to fix the toilet and forgot to leave (this is not helpful in the context, I feel, especially since the toilet is still not fixed but everything else has been well and truly disrupted). Plus Mr Lampert, who is going to take notes in Pitman shorthand, because he is a journalist and cannot do proper writing. I have summoned, I mean invited, these people so that we can all talk together about promoting the UK’s IP system abroad. We are fed up of going to foreign lands and saying, “The UK is quite good at IP, a little bit,” and the foreign land people saying, “But the Germans said they were better.” And then us saying, “Oh, yes, sorry, perhaps you’re right, we’ll get our coats.” We decide that we absolutely must rally together to establish the UK as a Centre of IP Excellence (I have no idea what this means, but I have been saying it so much that now everyone assumes it is a valid expression). To do this, we absolutely must first develop some Key Messages about Why the UK is a Centre of IP Excellence and indeed about What Exactly Is a Centre of IP Excellence, and then we can all go out and spread these messages, and the IPO and their friends in the Government can take the messages in their diplomatic briefcases wherever they go.
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Here are our Key Messages: 1. The UK’s IP professionals are really rather good. Quite a bit better than the Germans, actually. (No, no, sorry: after you.) 2. We are terrifically well schooled and terribly sporting, especially now we’re being watched by the Regulator. 3. We are spiffing to work with because we have English as our mother tongue, indeed our only tongue, apart from Latin which we really only use for incantations. Having English as your mother tongue means that everyone understands you, even if you don’t understand them. And bear in mind that ours is a rich language, full of idioms about cricket and rural life and canine anatomy, with which it is, frankly, a privilege to become acquainted.
JUNE 2017
CIPA JOURNAL
57
02/06/2017 18:01:27