Two IPs In A Pod
Brilliant inventions, fresh product designs, iconic brand names and artistic creativity are not only the building blocks of successful business - they deliver a better world for us all. But these valuable forms of intellectual property must be protected in order to flourish. We are the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys - the UK's largest intellectual property organisation. Our hosts Lee Davies and Gwilym Roberts chat with entrepreneurs, creatives, patent attorneys and the occasional judge about how patents, trade marks, designs and copyright can improve our lives and solve problems for humanity.
Two IPs In A Pod
INTA San Diego Pubcast Special with… Rob Jackson
Next on guest to join Lee and Gwilym in our San Diego Pubcast is Rob Jackson. Chair of CIPA's UPC Committee, takes us on a captivating journey from his unconventional entry into patent law to his passionate advocacy for UK patent attorneys' involvement in the Unified Patent Court system. With refreshing candor, he reveals how a suggestion from his mother, a legal secretary, and his childhood interest in what "Pat Pend" meant on Lego bricks eventually led him to a fulfilling career at Danes in London.
Simple message our members should get involved in the UPC. That's it. That's what we're all about. That's what the committee is trying to do.
Speaker 2:Lee Davis and Gwilym Roberts are the two IPs in a pod and you are listening to a podcast on intellectual property brought to you by the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys tourneys.
Speaker 2:So, gwilym, I've been spending a lot of my time in San Diego in my hotel gym running and stuff, but I understand that you've been out on the streets A little bit yeah, and I feel like we've been a bit rude about little bits of San Diego because the weather was grim and it was like being in Rill and I went on about that, even though we're right by Tijuana. I thought I said Portsmouth rather than Rille. Yeah, well, we Add battleships, Our own points of reference, but actually we have not talked about the good bits A the sun's out now.
Speaker 3:The sun is amazing. Yeah, it's quite warm out there isn't it. We area.
Speaker 2:It's a big street full of stars and things. It's quite lively Baseball game the other day rammed full of San Diego Padres fans.
Speaker 3:I know nothing about baseball.
Speaker 2:Happy hats. Baseball is wasted on me. I think it's actually. It's just like cricket, but standing up.
Speaker 3:Let's not get started on that. You're going to be a loser.
Speaker 2:You no, and I have to say I've been because you run on the treadmill.
Speaker 3:I do. Yeah, my knees are gone. I can't do it right, I get that.
Speaker 2:I thought I'd give it a go and been running around because the conference centre, which is enormous it's the size of a spaceship. Yeah, not a little spaceship, but in the size of a big spaceship. That's not very helpful. No, yeah, imagine a spaceship the size of a convention centre, then that's how big it is. That's how big it is, amazing, and running all around it, and the other side is the bay and it is actually super pretty. Yeah, that's quite posh boats as well.
Speaker 3:So I was walking around the convention set at the back end of it the other day on a lovely walk going to Seaport, and I came across a highly respected Seaport Luminary, ooh, and he's with us away. Let's podcast with them. So we have council member and chair of the UPC committee, rob Jackson. Rob, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much, lee. So it's lovely to have you on. We've not had you on before have we?
Speaker 1:No, never. I've never been on any podcast ever.
Speaker 3:But you're quite good at talking, aren't you? So that which is the prerequisite.
Speaker 1:Barely a word passes my lips.
Speaker 3:So we generally start these off with perhaps you telling us a wee bit about your backstory, so where it all started, how you found yourself in the world of IP, that sort of thing, if that's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, almost by accident. I guess Everyone says that. Yeah, I was a slightly strange child. I was reasonably good at both humanities and sciences, but not brilliant at either. I did science A-levels because you can figure out the answers to those questions without having to do too much homework.
Speaker 3:Yeah, OK, so that's quite good.
Speaker 1:But I always had a bit of interest in the law. So when it came to choosing what to do, I sort of dithered between sciences, engineering or possibly the law. I ended up going to university to do physics, but also had a bit of a hankering for legal work. One of my friends at university was studying law and I sort of found his. He took about some of his assignments and they somehow seemed more interesting than quantum mechanics. So that kind of got me thinking and I left university still not having figured out what I was going to do. Yeah, so I spent a year sort of dithering and traveling.
Speaker 1:I had a couple of part-time jobs and it was actually my mum that came up with being patented. I'd never met one. I've no idea. I never heard the job. You never met your mum. Sorry, I don't know where to go with that. How did she know about patents? Well, she was a legal secretary. Oh, okay, so all I find out. I do have this vague recollection as a child asking her what Pat Penn meant on the back of my Lego bricks.
Speaker 3:And weirdly she actually knew that.
Speaker 1:She knew, yeah. So I don't know where that came from. But anyway she was a legal secretary in a small town where I grew up. You know traditional sort of wills and divorces kind of practice. But it just happened that her boss in this small practice had been at school with a guy who was a partner in one of the well known patent attorney firms. You can name them. I think it was Ableton Inbury, I'm not 100% sure. I think it was Ableton Inbury and mum just came home from work one day with a letterhead because once in a while this guy would have people coming in who invented something and he knew he knew nothing about patents. So mum came home with a letterhead as I say, I think it was Ableton Inbury and said oh, you might be interested in this. So I was and I fired off a letter to the Institute office and they sent out some little leaflets about being a patent attorney and various other things and there was a service where they would put you in touch with a local firm.
Speaker 3:I don't know if they still do that.
Speaker 1:So it was great. So they sent me off I think it was a small practice in Stockport and I went there and spent a day there and just thought it was fascinating. So the guys there did a great job of interesting me in the profession and I just thought, oh, I think I'll go for that. So I fired off a few job application letters, not knowing really much about it. I just did a bit of research. God knows how I found them I think it was probably through a list from SIPA Wrote off to half a dozen firms and a couple of them had no jobs. A couple of them had no jobs. A couple of them offered me interviews but I think only one turned me down completely and um went off and did a couple of interviews and got a couple of job offers wow, yeah.
Speaker 3:So where did you start off? Where was, where was first gig? Um same place? I am now, oh, danes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've always been at Danes in London, in London, yeah, I'll tell you the funny thing, actually, that what got me the both job offers was one great thing about my old high school. It was a state comprehensive just south of Manchester. It had originally been a secondary modern school, a technical school yeah, so they had the most fantastic woodwork and metal workshops. I remember them well. Yeah, and that was before they'd invented health and safety. Yeah, of course, yeah, so what that meant was that if you got on well with the teachers, they'd let you go in and use all that kit during your lunch hour. Yeah, so I would.
Speaker 1:And it also helped that I borrowed one of the keys to the tool padlocks. So I, I had a unofficial copy of the tool cupboard key, uh, on my, on my key ring. So we just nip in and you know I'm going to say tools. I mean, you know industrial size lathes, yeah, and mills, oxyacetylene yeah, all that good stuff. And one of my best friends from school and I he went on to become a successful petroleum engineer and worked for an investment company. He and I made ourselves a motorbike out of a broken bicycle in the lawnmower. So this is when we were I think we were lower six when we did this and this thing went and it wasn't the most reliable motorbike you've ever seen?
Speaker 1:you'd think not, but it would do 25 miles an hour, and again because health and safety hadn't been invented, and cut the grass only if you disassembled it. So that would be good. So, rather wonderfully, the teachers have won the happy for us to motor this thing around the school playground during breaks and whizzed up and down this path between, called the link path between two school sites yeah so it was great.
Speaker 1:so reason I mentioned that is, we took photographs of it and when it came a few years later, going for job interviews, and some senior partner at the interview would say well, I'm assuming you've got a physics degree, but you know, do you? And I think that probably got me a couple of job offers Fantastic.
Speaker 3:So this is one of those times when you've got another physicist on the podcast.
Speaker 2:You feel at home, happy, happy, although I didn't get quantum, did you get quantum?
Speaker 1:physics. Oh yeah, we had to do quantum physics. I mean, did I get it? Until I understand it? No, but there wasn't that expression. Was it Einstein or somebody I can't remember? Somebody said said, if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So we must understand it, because we don't, there you go. Yeah, you've lost me. It's uncertainty. That's what we thrive on in. So what was the?
Speaker 3:training like it wasn't bad. I only ask that question because I know that you are an advocate of training.
Speaker 1:I am. It was good in the sense that you got stuck in. You worked for a number of different people, which we still do, and it meant that you learnt more than one way to skin the proverbial cat and it was great. I've always liked the place. It's always been a place I've enjoyed working. It wasn't terribly formalised, it was all a little bit random. You just got things thrown at you. It was a bit sink or swim, I suggest. It probably didn't comply with any kind of ideas of good practice regarding teaching, but sort of it worked.
Speaker 1:What you did get was a lot of time with some smart people who were not too. I mean, danes are fairly laid back, firm in terms of personal relations and, funnily enough, I remember somebody saying to me after I'd been offered the job and discovering I hadn't been to Oxbridge weren't you concerned about that? Because apparently at the time if you hadn't been to Oxbridge you weren't going to get a job. Yeah, yeah, but fortunately nobody told me that, and Danes was very laid back about that kind of thing. You know they weren't all Oxford types. So I fitted in pretty well and I must have been trained all right because I passed them all my exams the first time around and became a patent attorney, I've seen you describe training as an apprenticeship.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, on the job by doing absolutely. It's the very definition of apprenticeship.
Speaker 2:Yeah it interests me. I think the educationists are not sure what they think about that. You're an education, I'm an educationist, I am. What do you? What do you?
Speaker 3:think about that. So so I think there are different ways you can cut an apprenticeship. So you can look at that traditional model where you do the, where you do the kind of theory and the learning in a college-based or university-based way and you either practice on the job and that's an apprenticeship. But I don't think that that is. I don't think you can argue that what we do is any different. Yeah, so that the theory, the learning, may come in a different way. It may be more organic, it may be more down to the individual in terms of the way they pick that up, but in terms of the application of that learning into sort of like real life practical settings, it's absolutely an apprenticeship. Yeah, I agree entirely I don't think.
Speaker 2:But my personal thinking is that you need to do extra book work, uh, to get your exams, but and for me to know what you don't know.
Speaker 1:But certainly the stuff that I implement most days comes from that apprenticeship yeah, and we got sent on the then queen m and Westfield College certificate course, which I loved. It was a little bit unusual. I got sent on that after a couple of weeks. I was supposed to go after a year and then for some reason I was sent off straight away and actually, having had a year out, I absolutely loved it because all of a sudden I was back at university being paid money to do stuff that was easier than doing physics. So that all seemed good. But yeah, we've got all that. So the theory background there was good to have that kind of grounding. But then, yeah, it's learning by doing. I mean, the only way you can learn to write a patent is to write a patent and have somebody tell you what you've done wrong and have another go Keep on doing it. I think.
Speaker 1:I don't know of any other way.
Speaker 3:And it's actually in terms of a profession, it's. It's quite a difficult profession for you to see it working in any other way. So I'll be honest. So I came to see for, as you know, like 13 years ago now, and I I struggled early days to get my head around the the model, yeah. But once you understand that you're taking people who are highly adept, highly qualified in their technical field, who've done the hard years in university yeah, yeah, I get the qm and other courses have got their value in terms of that initial introduction to the law understand that entirely, yeah, and see the value in that. But the reality is these are people that don't want to spend a significant amount of their lives back in university. They want to learn on the job. Yeah, they want to learn that way. We need them to learn that way.
Speaker 1:It's perfect marriage I think I think it is. I mean also, I mean having now being on, now being on the other side of the fence. I'm doing they want to learn that way. We need them to learn that way. It's a perfect marriage, I think it is. I mean also now being on the other side of the fence and I'm doing the recruiting.
Speaker 1:It's really important not to fall into the trap of thinking that because you're a brilliant physicist, you're going to be a brilliant patent attorney. Yeah, you know it's a necessary To be sort of reasonably competent at the science-y condition for the job. It's a long way from being a sufficient one. You've got to have that. I mean. It's probably why it suited to me, because I wasn't a particularly great scientist, but I was good enough, but I was pretty good at the humanities stuff as well. And I think you do need to hire people who are interested in the law. And I remember people sort of complaining about failing the exams and sort of saying, well, I got a first class degree and I've got ad and all these qualifications in physics.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, yeah you know it's a different, it's a very different skill. So I think you've got to pick people who've got that range of interests and abilities. You know they don't necessarily have to be brilliant as any one thing, but you've got to be able to, you know, have that mix of skills. But once you've got that in terms of you know there's the law to learn. But in terms of the practical skills, like writing a patent application, I don't know. It'd be like trying to learn how to build a brick wall from a book. You know, until you pick up some bricks and some mortar, you know how are you ever going to do it?
Speaker 1:You've just got to have a go Make a few mistakes, make some mistakes, knock it down, start again.
Speaker 3:You know, that's the thing, and I know you're quite proud about the way Dane's trains today. Yes, I am. So what's changed or has it changed? Do you do things differently?
Speaker 1:Not in principle no, it's a little bit more structured. I think we have some of the rough edges that were there when it was a smaller firm when I joined. More formalised yes, there's more structure. We have clearer objectives about where trainees ought to be. At a certain point we said there were more courses that we involve people on, which I think is good. I mean, when I was studying for my finals, you know you've got the black book, which, for those who aren't familiar with UK practice, is a large black book.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Guide to the Patterns Act yeah and yeah, the Guide to the Patterns Act and you just start at the front and read through it and took notes and know it was very much self-study it's. There's a lot more structure. We're much better, I think, at giving people tutorials and, uh, generally structuring things, but ultimately it is down to the, to the candidate, to prepare themselves with the feedback from the, from the partners, and that I think really the main thing we do is just make sure people have exposure as much as we can to the right work and take the time. You know, face to face, yeah, and it might not be very fashionable, but personally I like that to be face to face in in real life, not over a screen. So you know, I try to be in the office, you know, four days a week at least talking to people.
Speaker 1:You can't always do it. Sometimes I'm here but you know, trying to spend the time with people and and just give people feedback on their work and that hasn't changed and also, within that, presumably helping people to understand that they're ready or they're not ready.
Speaker 3:That's critical.
Speaker 1:I mean the other hobby horse out of several hobby horses is the idea that's gone around that our final exams are some kind of lottery and that the key to success is just buying lots of tickets, Taking them out yeah. And I would take completely the opposite view, which is you really don't want to do them more than once.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know it's not a fun way to spend your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know when I'd done them I never wanted to do them again. And you know somebody very wisely I remember asking at sort of I can't remember what it was take them at that stage and you know I was getting good feedback. They said, no, wait until you've been working. You know three and a bit years or whatever, which is what I did. And you know I got good marks. I passed them and I'm so grateful because, you know, even if I'd passed two of the papers the year before, there's nothing in your life where your head's in the books. It's miserable.
Speaker 3:You know you're young, you don't want to be doing all that you need to, and there's nothing more disheartening than failing either, is there no?
Speaker 1:particularly amongst people who aren't used to failing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you know we're not really recruiting people who are.
Speaker 1:you know, they've probably never failed an exam, Do you?
Speaker 2:find that the way that people are taught through primary, tertiary, secondary well they enough One, two, three, whatever that order is. That's changed? Do you think that's changed the way that people approach how we train? Because they come in with different expectations of how they're going to be taught?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's the difference. Now. I think they actually are taught to some extent in tertiary now, aren't they? I mean, I remember when I was at university I mean it was a good university, I did okay, but the best teaching I got was at the end of the second year when we got the option of doing a workshop course. Back to the workshops again. The best teachers in our department were the lab techs and I got some fantastic teaching. I mean, I knew the basics of how to use a lathe and so forth, but those guys we had a week with them doing a course in case we wanted to build some kit. Yeah, I think they were the best teachers in the department.
Speaker 3:Because they were applying the learning in real-life situations, and that's the essence of good teaching, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:I mean, compared to some of the brilliant physicists who would come in. I mean, there was one guy who was notoriously so brilliant that if he dropped a sort of 20-page proof on the floor, it didn't matter which order he picked the pages up in, he'd still be able to understand it. You know, I mean and unfortunately people are that smart find it really difficult to understand why normal humans don't get it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so let's scoot it on a wee bit. Yeah, you've qualified. You're building your practice up in danes. Yeah, at some point you've got yourself in, involved in, interested in the work of seaper. How'd did that happen?
Speaker 1:I remember that it's a long time ago you always tell me it's a long time ago and one day I will find out for you when it was it was too long ago, but I think SEPA had a bit of a call for younger people to stand for council because we might be a bunch of dinosaurs now but back then we really you know it was, there was some I've heard the stories.
Speaker 1:It was, it was you know, really a bit of a bit of a seniors club, yeah, and yeah, one of the partners, I think, said we're looking for someone to do this and they probably knew I was somewhat opinionated and surely? Not. So yeah, that was that was it really had it had a go and and uh got elected and somehow keep sort of forgetting to stand down.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I've been there ever since. How do you think it's changed from the Osteocene era? Whatever the name is Jurassic.
Speaker 1:Jurassic. We all know Jurassic. I'm tempted to pull Lee's leg here, but I'm not going to. Will you pull my?
Speaker 3:leg. No, I won't actually, because I think it's transformed actually in terms of how professional the Institute is.
Speaker 1:I think it's transformed actually in terms of how professional the Institute is. I think it's a very different body. I think it's more representative. I think the members of Council are more representative of real-life patterns of profession. We should be looking to represent all members of the Institute, but we do also need to be mindful of the sort of businesses most people work in, and I think we are now much more representative of the broader profession.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think that's good. So in my mind, and if we're talking now specifically about council, you need that rich mix of people who are young and new enough for the profession that they're practising in the modern age and they kind of bring that with them. Yeah, but you can't lose the institutional knowledge that people have been around for a while and it's just about getting that right. Yeah, and it feels like we've got it right. I think that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think also I mean because so many of us have grown up through the profession we can all kind of remember when we started yeah, I and the pencil rubber and the pencils. Oh yeah, it's still, you know. I try and remind myself what it was like to be a trainee when we're talking about those sorts of issues.
Speaker 2:I don't know if we succeed.
Speaker 1:I guess everybody deludes themselves about those sorts of things, but yeah, I think we're doing pretty well. I mean, there'll still be people moaning that we're out of touch I'm sure they will, but I think we've got a good mix of people on the council.
Speaker 3:I agree. So one of the things that you found yourself doing more recently is leading the work around the Unified Patent Court. You can see yeah, talk to us a wee bit about that and why that's so important to you and the things that you're doing. Yeah, well, I've always been interested.
Speaker 1:It probably ties in with the story I gave you about how I came into the profession. I've always been one of those patent attorneys who's found the legal side of the job slightly more interesting than the technical side, I enjoy both, but it's the fact that it's a legal job that sort of got me into it.
Speaker 1:So it always seemed a bit of a shame as a patent prosecutor that you know you're sort of building something that you know. It's a bit like building a car and never driving it. Yeah, someone else litigates it yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 1:I always thought, you know, that's something I'd like to be more involved with them. Whenever cases came up that where we were, you know, assisting in enforcing patterns, I always found that really exciting and interesting. And then the opportunity came up. Years ago the opportunity came up to qualify as a patent attorney litigator, to get higher courts rights. So I was one of the relatively early people to do that. I went off and did the old nottingham course, which I found really interesting and I'm, you know, very proud of having done that. And so over the years I've not done as much of that work as perhaps I would have liked, but I have conducted cases. I conducted the first case all the way through to trial in our firm without involving solicitors, it was just us and the barrister, and that was ten years ago now that that trial took place. So I was involved in other matters before then, but that was the first matter that I took all the way through myself and it was. You know it was hard work but I found it very rewarding and I've always thought there's a lot of potential cross-versalization between what you learn when you're enforcing a patent and what you need to know when you're writing it. Yeah, so, you know, going back to the car analogy, really you know until you've driven one you don't really know how to design one. So I think, in a way, I know there's good practical reasons why people tend to focus on one or the other, but I've always I really think there's a lot. You need to transfer those experiences from enforcement to prosecution. So that was kind of at the back of my mind, always found that interesting.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, the UPC came along.
Speaker 1:It's always struck me as being a great opportunity for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1:One, because of the international scope of it and the fact that it gives the uk as you know, a country within europe has been coming up a leading place in legal professions. It's always seemed like a really good opportunity as a country. But also, you know, because we have in this country we've got a, you know, experience of a lot of epo contentious experience, yeah, and you and some of us have worked in litigation in the courts as well. So it became clear that the new system was going to be a little bit of a mixture of those things. So it just seems to be a great opportunity for UK based patent attorneys to get involved in something that's really important and actually offer something that fixes a lot of problems with the existing system in terms of making litigation affordable and efficient, because UK litigation might be expensive quite a number of continental jurisdictions, it's awfully slow and maybe not the most reliable of outcomes, so it really looks like one. A great opportunity for us as professionals, but generally a good thing.
Speaker 3:So I've just always I hope that makes some sense it makes sense, but there's a big leap from there in terms of you as a practitioner, yeah, to leading it in the way, leading in the way that you've gone, yeah. So why you? I mean, it feels like you're the right person to do it. Yeah, because the things that we're doing are amazing, I think, around upc at the moment. So so why you? And what? What are the really exciting things that we're doing around UPC?
Speaker 1:Well, why me? I suppose it was a little bit of a. Nobody else stood up. I think I guess I was on council at the right time. As I say, I had the mixture of someone who's done quite a lot of EPO contentious practice and a reasonable bit of UK litigation, so I guess I had the knowledge of both sides. I've also got a bit of an approach to these things that you know, I've always felt that some solicits, some patent attorneys, have a little bit of an unnecessary sort of cringe about the knee towards other legal practitioners and you know I don't want to, I don't want to talk down anybody else, because you know there's some brilliant people in all the different legal professions, but I have sort of felt that certain, you know, I get a little bit annoyed when some patent attorneys sort of think that as soon as they get an assignment or something slightly legal, they have to pass it off to someone else who may you know, who may well know no more about it than they do.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 1:I had a few experiences Years ago as a trainee or associate where we were involved on cases. I'd get phone calls from junior solicitors at some big-name firms who clearly hadn't the foggiest what was going on. So it really made me think that actually it's not what your job title is, it's how much time you've invested in learning and understanding the system, and I just feel really strongly that patent attorneys have got the ability to understand the case in the whole in the round. You know in a way, that if your training is focused so much on litigation and you're great at strategy and tactics, you maybe don't have that mindset that just says what's the answer.
Speaker 1:You know, I know patent attorneys might go to the other extreme. But you know we do handle a lot of contentious work anyway. So I just think we're really well placed to be doing that kind of work, of contentious work anyway. So I just think we're really well placed to be doing that kind of work. And then, as I say, when the UPC comes along, it sort of fits our skill set. Because of the similarities with the EPO it fits our skill set even better. So why I ended up doing it?
Speaker 3:I think I just felt strongly that someone ought to do it and I just well, you know, I'm the guy on council who can do this- yeah, so we've had this conversation previously and I know that there's some really interesting things that the UPC committee is doing, but I think we were talking a week or two ago about the need for this to be really practical, really hands-on, nuts and bolts-y sort of learning that we do Can you say a bit about that.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, actually just a thing I forgot to mention, because what really started this off was actually Matt Vixen's UPC task force, yeah, so I have to give a lot of credit to that. Guns for hire, yes, but I mean, that was the most important first step which I really should have mentioned, which was, you know, we had this opportunity for one year only to get lots of.
Speaker 3:As many Patent attorneys into the system. Into the system? Yeah, because that's really.
Speaker 1:Everything else follows from that. Yeah, everything else follows from that. Yeah, and you know the fantastic outcome of that is that you know the UK, despite not even being a UPC member state, has the second largest number of UPC representatives. You know that there are. So that's a fantastic starting point. Yes, but then, as you say, you do require some practical training and the.
Speaker 1:You know, the problem with any area of practice like this is there are lots of books on the law, lots of articles on the law. It's always difficult. I remember, I remember finding this from um learning litigation. Yeah, you know, because people are generally used to being in the law firm. That's got the old um outdoor clerks, as they used to call them. Who would, you know, sort things out? Yeah, there was always a sort of these things always done, but you know you never really quite knew. You know there was somebody who did these things, but you know the nuts and bolts, things like how do you issue a claim in a particular court. Yeah, you know that stuff tends to be missing from the books uh, so you even described it to be simpler than this.
Speaker 3:How do you find the court? Yes, where is it exactly?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, yeah well, yeah, exactly, and I realized this was an issue even going back to the old days of the patterns county court. Before it was, I was IPEC and there was this you know, I remember a seat put on a fantastic seminar where a guy came and just explained what you do, because in those days, in order to issue a claim, you had to go to the old Regent's something or other near Regent's Park. There was a county court up there and it was a lovely Regency Crescent.
Speaker 1:No-transcript was it was like it was like something in a soviet supermarket. You know, it was just crackers. But the point is it wasn't rocket science, but there's no book. That told you that you had to get it, so that was it. And that told you that you had to get it, so that was it. And again, as you say, the finally caught. Well, my colleague Laura and I gave a talk in Manchester.
Speaker 1:Manchester, yeah, a regional meeting or a Northwest regional meeting a couple of weeks ago and that was one of the slides we had, because, you know, we got to Paris for the actually the oral hearing on the first case to have been filed in the Paris Central Division wasn't quite the first hearing, because a couple of cases overtook us. We got there and everybody's seen the beautiful pictures of the Paris court on the UPC website, but what they don't tell you is how to get into the place and after doing two, if not three, laps of the entire building, which is a city block, we eventually figured out that the only way into this building was these sort of dull, grey, green doors on the back with no sign and we sort of gingerly, you know, crept in there and walked through a building site and actually turned out once you get in there.
Speaker 1:The people were lovely and very welcoming but you know, if that had been the day of the hearing, we'd have been the pickle, yeah, yeah. So if you have people, that's what we want to teach people really.
Speaker 2:Just get people the confidence to know how to do it, dare we talk about where things might one day go with the UPC in the UK.
Speaker 3:I was thinking about it. We can always edit it out if it doesn't feel right.
Speaker 2:There's tiny talk, isn't there, about just investigating that possibility a little bit more. I think council's position would be support, not being the primary driver. But, rob, when you're open, what do you think Should we go for it?
Speaker 1:Well, I certainly think it would be a good thing if it happened. I can't see any real downside. I mean, the whole UK was always going to be in the UPC. It was only a result of Brexit. Well, a political decision.
Speaker 3:It was a political decision. Actually, it wasn't even a result of Brexit.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I mean there were a lot of smart people who thought we could negotiate a way to stay in the UPC. And I have to say, when you talk to judges and people involved in the UPC, they seem to be very welcoming to us from the UK. I should say that's one thing I haven't sensed. There hasn't been any kind of what are you guys doing here? They seem to be very keen and I think we're reciprocating that by supporting the UPC very strongly. Yeah, so I think it's a sort of win-win for everybody.
Speaker 1:You know there's no, there's a practical question rather than a legal question or a political question. Yeah, there's no. You know, there seems to be nothing but positives for that. You know there are opportunities for English solicitors and barristers to get more involved as well as our members, our fellows. I should say We've got lots of members who are solicitors and barristers, so that's an opportunity. I think there's. I've certainly heard you can see judges actually in relation to Ireland saying we wish Ireland would jolly well hurry up and join, because we need some common law judges who can tell us what some of these bits of the rules mean, because obviously quite a lot of the rules are based on English legal concepts. It's not a civil law system, it's very much a hybrid system. So there'd be massive advantages in terms of getting some top judges involved, so there's every practical reason to do it. Then you're just running to the politics.
Speaker 3:We will need the political will. We're seeing that move at the moment.
Speaker 2:Well, today, isn't it A?
Speaker 3:central feature of this has always been the primacy of the CJEU, and we're seeing that that's becoming less of an issue in other areas of industry and commerce.
Speaker 1:I guess you're thinking about the food.
Speaker 3:I mean ultimately. I assume that means we're going to agree to follow what the CJEU rules about the food rules, and in any case, upc cases seem to not find themselves. No.
Speaker 1:Well, the UPC courts haven't referred a single case to the CJU yet, and, as someone who tried to persuade them to do it, they don't seem terribly interested.
Speaker 2:I picked up somewhere. They don't really want to because they know that the expertise isn't there. And then I'm not a bit honest. There's some legal, there's some fine point that you can only refer things up. That's the point of EU law, and there is many. I mean.
Speaker 1:The really important point that people need to understand, which is spelled out in a number of judgments, not least the Microsoft judgment regarding representation by in-house representatives, is that it's not an EU court. It is subject, in certain respects, to the supremacy by in-house representatives. Is that it's not an EU court? Yeah, it is subject in certain respects to the supremacy of EU law, but it's not an EU court and it has its own, basically enforces its own law. I mean, the articles of the UPC agreement set out patent infringement law and the EPC effectively sets out patent validity law. So you know, most of the law is its own. So you know, I think that's very important because people, you know, no doubt, if we do try and support a campaign to rejoin, there will be people trying to call an EU court, which you know isn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I saw a report from the Fordham Conference, which is that big ticket one, and it's either in New York or is it Cambridge, anyway, whichever this year and I think some of the UPC judges were asked what their regrets were and they said that they don't get that alternative approach available from the UK system because we were so instrumental in setting it up. But at the moment my feeling is that all the lovely little British bits we put in the common office have a risk of withering, aren't they? So we need to watch that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there is, because people, you know, I guess that's a risk, isn't it, if you've got judges who aren't used to thinking I want to hear this witness being cross-examined, or I wish somebody had ordered, you know, requested disclosure of this evidence, or whatever. Yeah, I mean that that is the risk I should say. I mean, one of the cases one of my colleagues was involved with, they did actually call expert witnesses and there was a limited amount of cross-examination. Yeah, it was quite controlled, but you know it did happen. So those things are still happening, but I'm sure, I'm sure it would be good to have have the judges matching the law gwen was looking at me because he knows I've got an eye on the time, because I'm time keeping I was actually checking your part rate.
Speaker 3:Time keeping is one of the things that I do, rob, and we're coming towards the end of time, but I've got a closer, unless you've got one, no, do it, do it.
Speaker 1:So do you want to say more. I want to say one thing, which is really that simple message our members should get involved in the UPC. That's it. That's what we're all about, that's what going to do.
Speaker 3:We'll make that the tagline for this podcast. Thank you, which actually we get lots of the stuff you said about the upc how to use it in snippets, which has been really good, yeah. But yeah, we'd like to have a little fun close close of it, which has got something to do with something we've talked about, but maybe only tangentially. I'm gonna ask willem and then ask you and then will ever surprise me by asking me and I'll surprise Gwilym by my answer. That's the way it works, so it's a tried and tested formula. We were talking a little bit about school and stuff like that. I don't know what your favourite subject was at school. What was?
Speaker 2:your favourite subject at school? It was actually English, english, bizarrely. Come back to your point, though, skills as a result, and that does feed into this job quite well. No, I really really enjoyed English. I only did it up to GCSE. I did history A level, but history for me is like science English. You know what I mean. It's more practical. No, I loved, I really loved English.
Speaker 3:Wow, yeah, I wasn't expecting that, no no, I was twice.
Speaker 2:I thought, you'd be Winner of the school poetry prize Wow.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, oh you're going to write some poetry for me at some point.
Speaker 2:Oh, you did yesterday about ducks. You did yesterday about ducks. Probably should repeat that one, though no, no, no.
Speaker 3:Rob, favourite subject at school Can't be physics or anything like that. History, history, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had a fantastic history teacher First gosh, probably two or school uh, really fantastic history teacher, always loved it. Yeah, I mean, I, I really I remember being torn because, of course again, for people who aren't from the uk listening to this may not know that you have to choose three subjects when you're 16, which is bonkers. So it is if you, if you, if you're me, it's bonkers. Yeah, um, because I, you know, I wanted to study physics and history, but there's no university that'll let you in if you've got a history, because you don't know enough other artsy stuff to do history and you don't know enough science to do physics. So that was my two favourite subjects, so I had to just can the history and go down the sort of sciencey route.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I got into university with physics and history, did you? You can still go back. You can still do history, you can go back.
Speaker 1:I think what I realised is you can kind of read history books. You can't read physics books. Fair point.
Speaker 3:Go on Latin. Don't shush Really, yeah. So I went to City of Portsmouth. Boys' School doesn't exist anymore, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Nor does Latin really.
Speaker 3:Back end of Pompey. Rough as it comes, comes Pompeii. But it only taught Latin because it just happened to have a teacher who was a classicist who taught Latin. Sadly, we stopped doing it in my second year at City Boys because he died in a motorbike accident. His name was Bomber Whiteley because he used to wear a bomber jacket and his surname was Whiteley and he was about four foot six seven but drove this massive Harley Davidson bike and would. Yeah. So I, yeah, I got my Kikilius, estin, atrio and all that sort of malarkey and I used to love my Latin lessons.
Speaker 3:That's fascinating of course it never made any impact on me because it stopped after he died. So we stopped learning it.
Speaker 2:You've told me elsewhere that you've got a bit of the German. Yeah, the German as well I would have said that the Latin grammar must have helped you. Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 3:Rob, thank you so much for spending your time on the podcast. I've been wanting to get you on for ages, so it's a bit of a success story for me, gwilym. See you on the next one, mate, in a few minutes hey, we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2:Bye.