Joining the Twitterati
Keen, as ever, to take part in the latest technology trends, Managing IP is pleased to announce that it joined micro-blogging service Twitter over the summer.
We are in the company of well-known bloggers Dennis Crouch of Patently-O, Jeremy Phillips, Axel Horns and, of course, the latest artist to wade into the copyright debate – Lilly Allen (see below).
So far, Utynam has been impressed by the way in which the IP community has taken advantage of this new way to share information. He has also been pleasantly surprised by the number of lawyers able to express themselves in only 140 characters.
For anyone who wants to follow our tweets, we are @managingip.
Break a leg
Fans of the TV show Dragons' Den, where would-be entrepreneurs expose their business plans to scorn and scepticism in the hope of winning investment for their schemes, may have seen Michael Pritchard's triumphant bid to secure funding for his anyway spray invention last month.
Utynam is pleased that two UK firms are also sharing in Pritchard's success: patent agency Gill Jennings & Every helped him build his IP portfolio while law firm Speechly Bircham advised the inventor on exploiting his product, a system that allows spray products to work whichever way the bottle is held. But he was particularly happy to learn that Gill Jennings went above and beyond the call of IP duty when it came to helping Pritchard to prepare for his admission into the Den.
A team from the firm put on a mock show to make sure the inventor got the explanation of the IP aspects of his business plan correct. Partner Peter Finnie played telecoms millionaire Peter Jones while associate Rowena Powell took the part of Deborah Meaden – a dragon who can crush the business dreams of any knee-knocking budding entrepreneur with the raising of an eyebrow. "Rowena wasn't happy about it but played it like the pro that she is!" reports Finnie. Congratulations all round.
File sharing fracas
Thanks to pop star, cricket fan and authentic cool person Lily Allen for her contribution to the music piracy debate. Allen, performer of "Smile" and "The Fear", wrote a column last month in establishment paper The Times saying file sharing is a "disaster" for new talent, and backing UK government plans to punish illegal file sharers.
She hit out at artists such as Nick Mason of Pink Floyd and Ed O'Brien of Radiohead, whose Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) has defended file-sharing: "The FAC is basically saying: 'We're all right, we've made it, so file sharing's fine.'"
The article prompted letters of support from other artists, such as James Blunt, and a big online debate, centred on Allen's Twitter page. On September 20, she set up a blog, idonntwanttochangetheworld, to post artists' views on the file-sharing debate in advance of a meeting organised by the FAC.
Unfortunately, it looks like that may be the end of Allen's campaigning. On September 24, she twittered: "I'm proud of the fact that that I've been involved with this debate but I'm passing the baton on to other artists" adding: "and I've shut down the blog, the abuse was getting too much." Newspapers also reported her as saying she would not make any more records. Utynam, an Allen fan, urges her to reconsider: the future of the music industry could depend on it.
Election fever
Oh, the tension. Just a few months after the US Senate approved David Kappos as director of the USPTO (ending months of speculation) and the JPO appointed a new commissioner, and a year after Francis Gurry was elected to WIPO's top job, we now have a four-way battle to head the EPO. Could Munich's IP election possibly match the excitement from Geneva, when Gurry won by 42 votes to 41?
Surely not. And yet, with less than a month to go to the election, there is no obvious winner – especially as the successful candidate needs the votes of three-quarters of EPO member states. Last time round, agreement proved impossible and after two years a compromise had to be agreed.
So who to put your money on this time? Before you nip down to your local bookmaker, Utynam is happy to offer one little-known fact about each candidate: Roland Grossenbacher wrote a PhD on the Soviet Union and the Universal Copyright Convention; Susanne Ås Sivborg is a former EPO examiner; Benoît Battistelli is deputy mayor of Saint Germain en Laye; and Jesper Kongstad is a Knight of the Order of Dannebrog.
Based on this impressive information, Utynam would not like to predict who will win. But he expects a close contest. And who is to say, if there is deadlock at the Admin Council meeting this month, whether a new candidate will yet emerge, perhaps from one of the EPO's bigger member states, to contest a new fight next year? We constantly hear that professional politicians are increasingly dull, and election results too predictable. That's certainly not true in the world of IP democracy.
