Utynam's Heirs

Utynam enjoyed a day in Washington DC last month, spent at Managing IP's US Patent Forum and then celebrating with the winners of the North America Awards. As well as leading law firms and companies, three individuals were recognised for outstanding achievement.

David Kappos received an award in recognition of his leadership of the USPTO and contribution to US patent reform. Bob Armitage, recently retired from Eli Lilly, was also recognised for some three decades of work on improving the US patent system and Alan Drewsen, who is retiring as executive director of INTA, received the lifetime achievement award.

In his speech, Drewsen reflected on some of INTA's achievements during the past 15 years, and his memories of working with trade mark practitioners. He concluded with a self-mocking story that involved an ex-girlfriend, her daughters, an absent husband, a visit to the Bronx Zoo and two elderly people. Utynam couldn't do justice to it here, but the moral was: sometimes you can try to explain too much. Better just to say "thank you".

The US Patent Forum was held at the Willard InterContinental which, as historians of American politics will know, claims to be the place where the term "lobbying" originated. (US President Ulysses S Grant allegedly received petitions in the lobby while smoking and drinking whisky.)

It was appropriate then that much of the discussion at the Forum focused on one of the most recent results of lobbying: the America Invents Act (the event took place just two days after first-to-file came into effect and the same day as the USPTO fee changes).

The following day, Utynam found himself in a Congressional hearing where Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante testified before the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property about the need for fundamental copyright reform. And of course the room was packed with lawyers and lobbyists. "If her proposals get taken up, we will be lobbying about it for the next 20 years," said one of them, adding: "That's fine by me. It will see my kids through school."

Utynam was pleased to attend Professor Sir Robin Jacob's lecture last month entitled IP Law: Keep Calm and Carry On? at University College London. The lecture was both the Bentham Association Presidential Address and the Inaugural Lecture of the Sir Hugh Laddie Chair in IP Law. Introducing the speaker, UCL President and Provost Professor Malcolm Grant said the two talks would be "concurrent rather than consecutive". As you would expect, Sir Robin's talk, delivered as an address to Sir Jeremy Bentham, was a tour de force of recent and proposed changes spanning patent, design, copyright and trade mark law. Among his targets were economists ("Can they not see? ... Patents don't fit their world view ....They should leave well alone."), lobbyists, politicians and journalists.

Sir Robin accused the latter of "muddling rights up" and criticised successive UK governments for appointing "two editors" who knew next to nothing about the subject to lead studies into IP (Utynam believes he was referring to Andrew Gowers and Ian Hargreaves). The result, he said, were proposals that were "nonsense" and "daft".

As a member of the fourth estate, Utynam does not entirely share these views. He also wonders whether Jacob's perspective has been skewed by his own recent encounters with the press, following reports that he became an adviser to Samsung shortly after writing a judgment in the company's favour. This included a mention last month in the notorious satirical magazine Private Eye.