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… AIPLA
On our last episode, we are stepping into the world of global intellectual property advocacy as we sit down with Margaret Polson and Lauren B. Emerson from the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA) during the INTA conference in San Diego.
I also use that as a classic example of never ask your patent attorney for marketing advice, Because I was like I'm like sitting here thinking who wants a heart-shaped camera? Literally, 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.
Speaker 3:So Gwilym we never know which order these are going to go out in.
Speaker 4:That's a pretty good point.
Speaker 3:So this might not go out in sequence, but if it does go out in sequence, this is our final in the podcast.
Speaker 4:It's emotional if it's our last one. If it's not, it's our last one. If it's not, it's not emotional.
Speaker 3:I'm still emotional whatever, yeah you said you don't have emotions well, I've got a tired emotion. I've got a little bit of elation. They've been really good, haven't they? I've had a really good time, yeah has that been your arc. Met some people tired and lazy.
Speaker 4:Learnt a huge amount yes, that always happens, doesn't?
Speaker 3:it. Yeah, I think we've been through an arc with San Diego yeah, yeah it's so awful.
Speaker 4:Kind of bizarrely, let's face it, we're trying to go through like this rollercoaster of about 24 hours. How long have we been podcasting? Maybe 36 hours, 36 hours so Difficult to really suggest that there's been some massive, long thing. We've done a lot of them. Yeah, we started off. It's a bit grey. Yeah, it's a bit like Portsmouth, it's a bit like Rhyl.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:But now you know, it's all sunny and we're on the big strip and I don't know it's been really good.
Speaker 3:And I'm just looking forward to like maybe one or two more drinks and then hitting sleeping.
Speaker 4:It's not true. That's not what happens. Three o'clock tomorrow afternoon we'll finally get back to the hotel. We know what happens.
Speaker 3:All the big parties are tonight so last year at Atlanta we had the brilliant opportunity of speaking with a few of our sibling professional bodies from around the North American continent. So we did IPEC and we did AOPLA and we've done IPEC earlier today, and now we've done IPIC earlier today and now we've got colleagues from AIPLA on. Thank you for coming. You're really welcome to the podcast. Would you mind introducing yourselves, if that's okay. In whichever order you want to go? Whoever wants to go first?
Speaker 1:Sure, I'm Margaret Coulson. I have a small IP prosecution firm in Denver, colorado. Which brief commercial AIPLA spring meeting will be there in 2027. So you guys can come to Denver, so I started the firm in 2014 and we do all types of IP prosecution and I particularly love designs of all types Design rights, design patents, design, copyright, trade dress, all that area where it intersects and gets weird and hard and fun, so I love that I got involved in AIPLA at my prior firm and then I found you know- one of the things I love about AIPLA is it has enough people and enough specialists that you know.
Speaker 1:For the first time I found a group of people that were really interested in designs and other things.
Speaker 2:People like you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people like me. They're not quite as weird as I am.
Speaker 3:We like that, we like that.
Speaker 1:That's good, that's good, you know when you're the six-foot-tall blonde patent attorney, you're kind of used to being the one-off, but so you know I got involved. I started I was chair of the Industrial Designs Committee, now the Design Rights Committee. I then got involved in doing professional programs at AIPLA. So AIPLA does a lot of CLE programming, so I ended up being chair of the committee that runs all that. And then, as a punishment for my service, I got invited onto the board of AIPLA, so this is my third year on the board. I will roll off this October.
Speaker 3:As in, you can't carry on.
Speaker 1:No, no. Aipla board members have a three-year term Right okay. And so the board at AIPLA is the one that makes ultimate decisions about any policy policy comments, is the one that makes ultimate decisions about any policy policy comments, so we're the ones that give final approval to any comment letters we send to your you know, other professional organizations or the USPTO. We file a lot of amicus briefs, obviously mostly in the US courts, but we recently did one at the EPO on the issue of definiteness and the whole amending the spec.
Speaker 4:Yeah, oh good, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3:The hardy perennial. Oh yeah, yes, the hardy perennial.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so we did it. We'll see the AAPLA and the EPO Board of Appeal has had a full and frank exchange of views on that topic. So, yeah, it's a great organization, you know, particularly coming from a smaller firm. You know I get opportunities, like to be interviewed on a podcast at Inta that I never would.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know I get a profile. You know I've been invited to speak all over the world because of the work I've done at AIPLA.
Speaker 3:So, Lauren, what's your story?
Speaker 5:All right, so my story. So I'm Lauren Emerson. I'm with Leeson Ellis, which is an IP boutique in White Plains, New York. I co-chair our trademark and copyright group there. I've been with that firm for almost eight years now.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 5:Got involved with AIPLA also when I was at my prior firm. So I've been involved with AIPLA for I'm not sure how many years, but it's north of 10. And I dove in on the copyright side. It was a fantastic copyright committee and was very involved with that for a number of years, eventually chaired that committee. I did a brief stint on our amicus committee, which was fantastic, and worked on some some neat briefs there and uh, and then join margaret on the board. I'm, I guess, coming up towards the end of my first year okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I know you're going to get down and dirty with the techie stuff, but can I do a little bit of like aopla governancey stuff?
Speaker 2:yeah, is that okay?
Speaker 3:so I'm quite interested, so it's super. Uh. So we don't have a board, we have a council, but it performs the same function and we don't have any end term. Whilst my council members serve a three year term, they can keep serving them and generally do, which for me is useful, because that means we get a bit of institutional kind of memory. Longevity quite interested that you have to come off after three years and what does that mean?
Speaker 1:memory well, so we, I mean we have, we have like vince is an employee of the organization. Yeah, yeah, that's my job, yeah, so vince is, uh, you know, vince and megan, um, and, and, and some of the staff at aipla are the institutional. Okay, um, aipla has, um, 12 board members. They were. We roll on in groups of four, so you know, there's always a new group of four coming in, so there's always eight people that have got one or two years in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it provides a good transition. There's always the new people that are learning. There's the people that are like yeah, yeah, we've done this before and it does that. I mean, AIQLA tries really hard to, so we're really pretty strict with our committees, Unless something goes unusually wrong you're gonna spend two years as chair and you're rolling off. We want to give more people the opportunity to serve. You know, what we find as an organization is for people. Just people need to be involved to stay involved.
Speaker 4:There's demand for that. So you got people wanting to get involved, to stay involved, but there's demand for that. So you've got people wanting to get onto the committees wanting to get onto.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, you know, and.
Speaker 1:I mean so you can join. So AIPLA is different in that you can join any committee you want. It's a checkbox on our website. Once you're a member, you go check a box and you're a member of whatever committee you want to be, and we always encourage people. Go whatever committee you want to be and we always encourage people. You know, go sign up, you'll get emails, you'll see what's going on and you know if you get involved in a committee and, you know, start helping with various projects. You know at some point you're going to be asked, so hey, you want to be part of leadership.
Speaker 2:And you know you get invited on as vice chair.
Speaker 1:You spend two years as vice chair and then, assuming something hasn't gone horribly wrong, either professionally or personally, then you would normally serve two years as chair.
Speaker 3:What we consider a very important part of our job, as leadership is always looking for the next group Succession planning, succession planning, succession planning.
Speaker 1:So when you take over, as you know, when you get pulled in as vice chair, you know you're told we're going to want to know two years from now who's going to be replacing you. So start looking for those people now. And the same thing with chair. You know, is your vice chair doing a good job? Do you think they should step up job? Do you think they should? They should step up? Um, you know. So it really helps keep people, you know, active and interested. And you know, you know we joke in in in membership, because you know all professional organizations are having a hard time with members. I mean, it's going down worldwide and you know we want, we want to, we joke that we want to make aipla stick yeah we want, we want you to stick.
Speaker 3:We're in a fortunate position where we're not going down. Well, yeah, it's weird, isn't it? We're still growing.
Speaker 4:There's good reason for it but it's good to see against the general trend. I was actually going to ask about sticking on a governance team. Yeah, you obviously are volunteers. Yeah, I think that's one of the interesting things. So when volunteers do something, it's because they've seen some benefit out of it, either to themselves or to the community. What tends to drive people to get more involved with the committees and with the board?
Speaker 5:I think it varies by individual, but I know I can speak from my experience on the Copyright Committee. It's had a group of very smart, very diligent copyright attorneys who really, really care about the issues and jump at the opportunity to weigh in on potential legislation or amicus briefs and to sort of really collaborate with like-minded people who are, you know, equally invested in improving the profession as a whole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's some of both. I mean, again you get you know again, coming from a smaller firm, you raise your profile a lot. You know, for me mean, again you get you know, again, coming from a smaller firm, you raise your profile a lot. You know, for me, a huge part of it was, you know, designs has become more and more prominent. So back when I started doing design patents, they were the weird kid in the corner that everybody looked at funny and I was like oh, you do designs. Nobody ever infringes a design patent, right. And then Apple v Samsung came out and everybody went wait, there's a separate damages statute, yeah, and so it's really raised the profile of designs. And one of the things I'm really passionate about is providing good design educational content. People need to learn about it. There's more I want to learn, so I want to organize something where the people I want to learn from will come top. Sure, and as long as I'm doing that, I might as well do it for other people.
Speaker 4:I loved designs when I was training that's a while ago, Because you used to get it by fax or something. You get the drawings by fax and you had to cut them out and glue them on a piece of paper. And then you get the captions. You had to cut them out and glue them on and they had to draw blue lines around the bits. You disclaimed it was the most therapeutic and relaxing. It was fantastic arts and crafts. I love it. It's cut to the stick and it's really, really good. I know it's never done from that, but I'm out of interest. Normally something happens in your career that opens up that realization of something you love. Yeah, when did that happen to you? When did design what?
Speaker 1:was the moment. So about, though I started doing I got a client. So accident of client. Early in 2000, a client came in to see me and Brian brian kelligan he owns bison designs in colorado and he he was making, he was a climber, a rock climber, and he was making the aluminum keychains for aluminum carabiners for keychains, and he had the dumb moment that, well, if, if they're now keychains, they don't have to be in the functional shape they did. You know, so we can make them fun shapes, right.
Speaker 1:And so he, he went and he got, you know, he did a star and a heart and a football, american football, you know, in these first set of shapes. And you know he came in and was like, how do we protect things? And clearly a carabiner is not a new thing from the american civil civil war. So you know, utility patent was, was the obvious thing to do, and so I started doing them with brian and I discovered I really liked doing them and I discovered how powerful they. And I also use that as a classic example of never ask your patent attorney for marketing advice, because I was like I'm like sitting here thinking who wants a heart shaped carabiner?
Speaker 1:literally, he sold millions of them, right? Millions of heart-shaped carabiners, star-shaped carabiners, dog bone shaped carabiners. They have one of everything, right? They've sold millions of them, so never ask your patent attorney for marketing, you get the protection.
Speaker 4:The same question in two seconds. Because carabiners can flee civil war.
Speaker 1:Did you just say that they're named carabiner because of the carbine guns, carbine guns Really. Well, why? I don't remember what they were, the clips?
Speaker 3:The clips, the carbine guns. Oh the climbing. Oh right, Leather strap clonk, clonk, gun on.
Speaker 4:Well, there you go. That's what podcasts are for. Thank you very much for the information.
Speaker 3:What do you?
Speaker 4:think of knowing that.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I've come from Portsmouth, I know my military history a little bit.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So, Lauren, what was your flashpoint moment?
Speaker 5:when you thought in terms of getting more interested in copyright. So you know.
Speaker 4:Or actually top podcast tip. Whichever story you want to tell, don't worry, all right.
Speaker 3:Whatever the question is, tell your story, all right, fair enough.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so I was probably a young, maybe mid-level associate the primarily trademark practice when Pinterest came out.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:And so, all of a sudden, we had a lot of questions from clients about well, what can we actually do with these images? Is this basically recreational copyright infringement, or are we okay here Started fielding, that's a great phrase. And thank you, I coined it.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 5:And yeah, so started, you know, getting building more and more copyright questions and you know, as an associate looking to distinguish yourself, I kind of dove in on that and started taking on more and more copyright work and it's fun. It's really fun, especially now we're getting into all the AI stuff. So it's just an area that's?
Speaker 3:That was going to be my question. Yeah, yeah, so I mean it's a biggie for us in the UK. At the moment, the UK IPO is consulting on copywriting AI, similar here.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so what's the future? Come on, look over the horizon for us.
Speaker 4:Look over the horizon, just succinctly, what's?
Speaker 3:the future Just a Well in the short term everyone's going to.
Speaker 5:you know they're going to keep fighting it. I mean multiple cases pending in the US courts. I would, I guess, be a little bit surprised if they all come out the same way, and so you expect to see these issues kind of start to work their way up the system and see where it goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, the US court system is not known for its speediness or monetary efficiency. So you know, on the bright side there's a lot of lawyer work to be done. You know, it's a full employment act for lawyers at the moment and we get to look like we know what we're talking about.
Speaker 3:So is AI's advocacy income. Oh, wait, it's not bad 11 podcasting, is it?
Speaker 4:Are you developing a policy position around AI and copyright? Do you have a position you're going to vaguely take, or is it too early for that?
Speaker 5:I think it's too early for that position you're going to take, or is it too early for that? I think it's too early for that. I think you know the there's um, there's a lot of work being done by the, the committees, to to try to to figure that out, but it's a sort of a, a joint venture. There's an ai uh task force within the organization and then, of course, the copyright committee, and so you know.
Speaker 1:But we have, I think we've taken some early positions early, yeah, but it's still. The board has made some resolutions on ai. I mean, a lot of what we've been concerned about is ai use by the office. Yeah, okay yeah so you know, we know they're using ai to do searching and things like that, but none of us want to see the ai trying to write the office actions yeah because it's really not there and you know the hallucinating stuff I mean.
Speaker 1:I occasionally decide, you know, can you know go check? You know, can chat gpt do my job? You know it's a really good creative writer. I gotta give it that but, you know when it completely hallucinates sections of a patent yeah and it sounds really plausible right it sounds like the section of this patent that you asked it to quote and then you go to search it to be able to cite it and you're like that phrase doesn't exist yeah.
Speaker 5:But you get into some of the juicy sort of fair use. Is it fair use, is it not? And you're talking about training the large language models on copyrighted content and things like that. And for an organisation like AIPLA, it's always interesting to tackle questions like that because our members come from all industries, so we've got folks on the tech side and on the content side trying to come up with positions.
Speaker 4:That's a question I've always got for organisations like yours and ours actually, which is that you've got all these different points of view. How do you reconcile them, how do you kind of find them? Do you look for consensus or do you just find the main points of view and express them? How do you do it?
Speaker 1:I mean so at the board level. It's by long, sometimes ugly, debates at the board.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know we try to come to a consensus. We have to have a majority vote, we have to have more than a majority for amicus positions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:And so we spend a lot of time. Well, will you accept this? Does this wording make you feel better? Does this wording make you feel better? But we try really hard on our board to have people from a diverse set of law firms and in-house and all of that, so we get all those views because we really don't want to lose that. You know we try really hard to be an arbiter for a good ip system that works well I was gonna say so.
Speaker 3:Sometimes we'll find ourselves in a position where we can't get consensus, let alone a majority. So sometimes, actually quite often, we want to put all views, and that's what we do. We say so these are the perspectives. Yeah, this is how the profession sees it through different lenses Over to you. Over to you. Not all the views, maybe not all of you Any big semi-majority news?
Speaker 4:We've been told they don't mind that. Yeah, how is the B Quite want to hear? I won't mention that we have a sister organisation, a sibling organisation, I think, say in the UK, where I get the feeling sometimes they end up consensus-ing it to death.
Speaker 2:And there's almost nothing left. That's always a tricky To actually have an impact.
Speaker 4:It's so tricky, isn't?
Speaker 5:it. Yeah, I mean go ahead sometimes where we can reach. You know, common ground is not on maybe, a particular view on what the outcome should be, but on educating perhaps a court on what some of the unintended consequences of going this way or that way might be yeah, and we do that a lot, like our rules commentary.
Speaker 1:I mean the USPTO and the Copyright Office, to invoke my Southern Heritage. Bless their hearts. They try hard but they're thinking of it from their operational point of view and we really have to be there to say this isn't going to work because, right, yeah, understood.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know and so you know and we have a really you know, we have a long-standing relationship with both the Copyright Office and the USPTO. You know, they know who we are, they know we're going to comment, you know, and we try really hard to keep that relationship cordial and friendly and all of that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we understand, that, don't we yeah.
Speaker 1:But on the other hand, if things are going, you know there have been times when the office is going seriously sideways and we're like, hey, no, this is not right, and you know, most of the time it's you know a lot of the time what we say gets listened to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and you know from a you know from a fun personal point of view. You know I was on the Industrial Designs Committee when the Hague, us was joining the Hague Convention for the Protection of Industrial Designs and the first proposed rules came out and we were like wow, yeah, wait, hold on. And so we sent in a whole bunch of comments of this needs to change and this needs to change, and the office adopted our position. I mean, almost all of our comments showed up as part of the final rules.
Speaker 2:That happens, isn't it?
Speaker 1:You know, almost all of our comments showed up in the final rules and that's both helping the profession, helping the office and it's a really great feeling. We spent a lot of time on those rules.
Speaker 3:Fairly, recently we put in a not an amicus brief to the Unified Patent Court because it doesn't take amicus briefs. So we wrote to the court and we got a lovely letter back saying can't look at this, yeah, we can't have seen this because we can't accept briefs. And then the determination was almost word for word what we had submitted.
Speaker 4:So you mentioned looking at international duties and impact on the US. You mentioned specifically the EPO. Do you guys tend to send documents globally? Who's that driven by? Who's asking you to focus on an EPO issue? To send documents globally wherever? Who's that driven by? Who's asking you to focus on an EPO issue? Where does it come?
Speaker 1:from Some of both, so a lot of offices reach out to us asking for comments. That's cool. We have a very active IP in China committee that looks for things that we can comment on. I know the.
Speaker 1:Singapore office has reached out to us a number of times when they were drafting new rules, saying they actively solicited our comments. So it's a combination of both. It's a combination of some of the offices actively want our comments, Some of the offices we find out about it and we're like, hey, we can and we try to listen. I mean, we have very active international practitioners in the organization and so we try really hard to listen to the European things. These guys aren't going to listen. Where we can comment is over here.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And part of the whole point of professional organizations is to build those bridges and to keep those doors open and to try and promote.
Speaker 3:But that's a tough gig, isn't it? Because that's a lot of work. It's continuous work.
Speaker 1:You can't let up no, no, I mean I was that, I was at the. I heard I were at the TM 5 and the industrial design 5 met before INTA and they had a users group meeting on Saturday. So we were there representing AI PLA, you know to, in front of the five. You know the five offices were there to hear what user groups wanted to say. And so you know we, you know we gave them our comments on both the designs.
Speaker 1:One was on graphical user interfaces, which is a huge issue. Designs is the least harmonized area of IP law. What you think you know in the US has nothing to do with what's going on in other countries and you know it's starting to harmonize. Everybody's starting to realize this is important and they need to pay attention. But graphical user interfaces are one of those areas where there's huge differences. There's still countries that you can't protect them at all and then there's some countries that are like, yep, this is great, let's do all of them. I mean Korea now accepts animated files so you can show a whole animation of how your GUI works. That's quite cool.
Speaker 4:Often, lee, you say we learn stuff on these podcasts. But obviously one of the things I love agree, yes, I agree. But one thing I really love actually is just how many different international organisations we talk to. Yeah, and the passion everywhere is brilliant. It's really lovely that and there is quite you get to feel there's a real global community of people who care about IP, and usually in a really well balanced way. You know you're going to have people who hate IP and you're going to have people who abuse IP. We don't tend to meet them. We tend to meet the people in the middle who understand that it's there for a reason.
Speaker 4:It works really well.
Speaker 3:Ip has got such a network so I don't know if I'm adding to what you've just said or not.
Speaker 4:Undoubtedly but I'm going to say it anyway. I'm feeling augmented already you're augmented excellent.
Speaker 3:Yeah, bless your graphical user interface. So oh no, I forgot where.
Speaker 4:I was going to say no. I think that is those relationships, and I think they can be quite useful if you're meeting a lot of people.
Speaker 3:Remember where I was going.
Speaker 4:And.
Speaker 3:I think we've heard it here Also the thing that most people are looking for is the kind of holy grail of harmonisation, isn't it? You've said it we all accept that systems are different, that there are these complexities, but actually most people would like to find some degree of harmonization in there somewhere.
Speaker 4:I think so, and the was it. Uh, hang on, we've, we've so many podcasts. Yeah, we have wipe out. Earlier on, yeah, they were saying they were so chuffed about two multinational treaties traditional, traditional knowledge. And the design rights.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Riyadh design rights treaty happened in November, and then the traditional knowledge one sometime around the same time. I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 3:Fairly close, weren't they? Yeah?
Speaker 4:That's getting 193 countries to agree to a comment. And they said in an age of increasing polarisation, it is good to see, because I've been saying for a few years we peaked, colonisation peaked, but I think there's such a strong community of people who want still to make it happen. It's quite exciting, isn't it?
Speaker 1:no, I think it is, and I mean the design rights treaty is a great example. The design rights treaty has a lot of very important things. It covers graphical user interfaces, it covers partial designs, it covers having a grace period. So the design rights treaty has who was it the QO?
Speaker 4:That's not the European Actually. No, we got some of them.
Speaker 1:But European designs have a grace period, right.
Speaker 3:They have a one-year grace period, like you guys do, which?
Speaker 4:still scares us, though Scares us Still disagree with it. Anyway, that's just a personal thing.
Speaker 1:No, you know, you get five IP practitioners and we don't talk and grab grace period and you're going to get seven opinions Indeed, indeed, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, it's been good to see you. Actually, I think these conversations do give me a lot of heart. For all of that, I'm from the patent world and that's got nowhere for decades now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe it's too complicated 40, 50 years of harmonisation.
Speaker 4:Yeah, just not getting anywhere. What gets me actually about the patent system I'm off on one now is how arbitrary maybe in all of our stuff there's some arbitrary numbers in the patent system that make me laugh, for example the one year priority period Predicated on how long it took a pony to get between Land's End and John O'Groats, or something like that.
Speaker 4:Publication period predicated on how long it used to take to typeset a patent, and the the duration 20 years probably predicated on human generation yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah but I think what I love about it, though, is people accept these harmonized rules at face value without really questioning them, and as you get into it a bit more, you realize you never can, because the moment you open that debate, so some bits of the pattern system. I'm just talking, no.
Speaker 3:You are just talking now Is that?
Speaker 4:OK, it's fine. Yeah, Some bits of the pattern system I should interview you one day. Don't necessarily make contemporary sense, but they work and the harm of it is around the world and in a sense, that's the tricky bit, isn't it? We've got to grab those moments when they're working.
Speaker 3:Can I repeat a question that I asked of our Canadian colleagues earlier on? Yeah, so in the UK, and I want to find out a little bit about the position in the US now, and particularly in the current political climate. Uh-uh, small people, no small people. In the political climate let's not go big P.
Speaker 3:So in the UK we have the International Property Office and it performs largely two functions. It's a business in government in that it's where you file your patents and your trademarks and it makes money for government in that way through filing fees etc. But it's also the policy engine of government. So it would be advising the minister and kind of the wider kind of civil service team about IP issues, so that government makes some reasonably sensible decisions around IP, and our job is to influence them in both spheres. It's to make sure that the mechanics of the patent office sorry, the IPO works for us as a profession, but also to make sure that when we're making law and policy, it's good law and policy in the interest not just of us but also the primary beneficiary, the user of the ip system. Yeah, yeah. So what's this? What's the position now in the in the us with uspto? Because it's, I understand it's slightly more political than that, but I guess it's performing the same kind of duality of function yeah, so I mean it.
Speaker 1:It's so, since the head of the USPTO is a political appointee, so policy can shift between administrations. I mean there's a core set of people that are sort of driving it along. There is a lot of, you know.
Speaker 3:Patents need to work for small business and all of that, and business needs certainty.
Speaker 1:And business needs certainty for small business and all of that and business needs certainty, and business needs certainty. And so you know, in the US I think it's much more most people agree on the goals. We're just arguing about how we're going to get there, okay, yeah, yeah. You know, so you know to be. You know like in the US, 101 is eligibility right and that is its own flaming.
Speaker 4:I don't know, Flaming morass yeah yeah, flaming, morass of you said flaming morass.
Speaker 5:She gave this flaming. I gave you morass, Poetic.
Speaker 4:You should collaborate more.
Speaker 1:You know of. I mean, the Supreme Court is ruled and the current standard is so vague as to be unworkable, and so you get cases that come out one way and come out another way and there's very little predictability for business. Yeah, and the supreme court has made it really clear they, very they view this as an issue for congress to fix okay, they're not going to rule again okay this. You know eligibility is a fundamental part of the patent system. There needs to be a legislative fix.
Speaker 4:It's not tidy. They're not going to fix it which is somewhat rare in our.
Speaker 2:Supreme Court to be like nope, you guys, we're not touching it. They're pretty willing to go there.
Speaker 1:But in the eligibility world they've made it very clear that this is a Congress issue to fix. There are current proposals, draft legislation on trying to fix it. As you can imagine, that is an extraordinarily contentious issue, you know, because they're the two big. I mean in the US, eligibility affects two main groups of people and that's biotech and software.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and you know us mechanical people. But I mean I do the other part of my practice that's an awful lot of fun in the mechanical utility patent world is I do patents on amusement rides. So you know you don't generally have an eligibility problem with an amusement ride it's like, no, no, this is a thing and it's you. No, no, this is a thing and it's going. You know. But so, but certainly you know my software colleagues and my biotech colleagues. You know 101 is a huge issue.
Speaker 4:I was talking about amusement rides.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is so much fun, and so the amusement ride industry has the best conference, so they have. Iapa, which is the International Association. I'm forgetting the exact thing, but it's all amusement parks and other fun, small attractions and all of that.
Speaker 4:Where do they hold them Presumably at?
Speaker 1:In Orlando, they have them around the world, but the biggest one is in Orlando in Florida. It's at the convention center, oh no.
Speaker 3:You were thinking this was happening on rides?
Speaker 1:No, but they have rides in the convention centre.
Speaker 2:Back in the game.
Speaker 1:And it covers Everything From the rides To the insurance, to the trinkets and toys they give away in the games, to the food.
Speaker 4:To the ticketing and the vendors call it that Trinkets and toys they give away in the games to the food.
Speaker 1:Oh, the trinkets and toys. Oh, my goodness. And the vendors call it that right. It's trinkets and toys To the like, the suits for the people that dance around in a costume.
Speaker 3:Oh wow, oh wow.
Speaker 1:I'm at the wrong conference, and you know. So, like you know, we can sell you a bunny suit or a bear suit, or you know, or the animatronic things you know. Somebody does it, of course. No and it's this huge conference, it's multiple floors of the.
Speaker 1:Orlando Convention Center. They've had roller coasters set up in there. They have all sorts of rides set up in there. They have the big VR games where you're going through with a headset on and shooting things and it is the most fun you will ever ever have at a convention, which kind of makes sense.
Speaker 3:So next year then yes, it is in.
Speaker 1:November, the week before Thanksgiving.
Speaker 4:And you go there, I go there. Do you go there with a little booth?
Speaker 1:No, so I'm there in support of my clients. So, as with most convention, I have multiple clients in the amusement ride industry um because there's not many.
Speaker 2:There's not many attorneys that specialize in this and they're like you know. So you know, hey, you know we need to get a patent.
Speaker 1:Who do you use? Go talk to margaret. They have an ip takedown procedure, like most conventions do. So you know, I go walk the floor and I look for things that are infringing my clients' rights and I go talk to the very nice people in IP enforcement with a copy of the patent and a you know.
Speaker 4:Hey, this needs to come down and, and this is I mean, are we talking about patents for general roller coasters, or patents for trinkets or the whole?
Speaker 1:All of the above. So ropes courses, roller coasters, I'm so sick of telecoms.
Speaker 4:Look as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2:I have the best job ever I get to learn about roller coasters.
Speaker 1:I get to learn about design patents Now it really sucked during COVID. I've got to say that was an industry that got really hard hit. We should have done this earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because because you know, I'm just about to do that annoying thing that I do, which?
Speaker 3:is to say, one of my jobs is to keep time and we're kind of near the end, but I don't know if you've got any more questions going on. But I've got a question, general question, then a closer you got your I'll explain the closer in a moment. General question from both of your perspectives what's big on our plas radar in terms of things that you want to get done in the next 12 months or so?
Speaker 1:I mean so AI and the fair use question is a lot of what's going on. You know, trying stability is what's on a lot of our minds these days. You know, making sure that the system remains stable. Okay, because the reality is, any of us can live with the system as long as we know the rules. We may not like the rules, but you know we're lawyers. We work with rules, but if the rules are continuously changing, that's a problem.
Speaker 3:Anything specific from the trademarks or copyright perspective? Lauren.
Speaker 5:I think that that's a lot of what the copyright side of things is looking at. Is that AI issue?
Speaker 5:It's so pervasive, it's across everything From a sort of you know as an organisation. As Margaret mentioned, it's becoming, I think, increasingly challenging for IP organisations to attract and retain members, and so that stickiness is really big, and so one of the things we tried is, historically, the organization has had this midwinter meeting as one of our three stated meetings, and this January we tried an experiment of doing a different format, which was really a leadership forum where, instead of focusing on the substantive IP issues, we focused on just different leadership type issues, which was really neat and, I think, figuring out sort of how to use that time slot for, you know, keeping the energy of the organization going and attracting new members and all of that, so that's been something that we've been thinking about quite a bit so the closer?
Speaker 3:okay, you ready for this weather? Yeah, so the way the closer works is I've ready for this, willem. Yeah, so the way the closer works is I've been listening to everything we've said and I've come up with a largely tangential but connected to what you've been talking about. It's nothing to do with IP. It's never to do with IP. I'll ask Willem, then we'll ask you.
Speaker 4:This is thinking time, by the way, so you've got to think while I'm yeah, while he's answering, you get thinking time you're going to know where I'm going with this.
Speaker 3:I'm going to say Crocodile, is that a ride or something you could do at?
Speaker 4:a fairground.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is no, if that's the question so the question is so it can either be a fairground ride or anything anything else that you might have ever done in a fairground or funfair. What's your favourite funfair?
Speaker 4:type experience. So in Hong Kong and we got a place called Ocean Park. You might know Ocean Park in Hong Kong, which is a big, not the Disneyland, it's the other one, the bigger track from Hong Kong Island and they had a water thing where you went in big rubber rings and the pool and the slide and the pool and the slide and the pool and the slide. I remember going best time. That's fantastic, definitely. My happiness because quickly, william's theory on roller coaster rides the reason roller coaster rides are exciting is because you're not sure whether you're going to die or not, and hopefully you're not going to die. Ergo they're not exciting unless you do die.
Speaker 1:Sorry to all your clients look, a lot of engineering goes in making sure that you feel like you're going to die.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I know, I know.
Speaker 3:It's amazing Sloan.
Speaker 5:I think my favorite also as a kid, there was sort of a water park that had this wave pool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:I like the wave pool quite a bit. Oh, that's quite fun.
Speaker 4:Yeah yeah yeah, really dangerous.
Speaker 5:I think, they're dangerous. It's been a while since I've been in one.
Speaker 3:I'm terrified about what Margaret's going to say.
Speaker 1:She's got a lot of expertise here, so my favourite is indoor skydiving. Oh the tube thing the wind tunnel. So one of my clients is iFly Indoor Skydiving. They are the ones that developed I mean, indoor skydiving has been around for a long time but they're the ones that first developed a really commercially successful, really safe system. Right right, right, and flying in those wind tunnels is the most fun.
Speaker 3:I can only imagine yeah, yeah, never done that it's so much fun and it's so much more.
Speaker 1:So I mean everybody's like, oh, I'm going to be scared and I'm like, no, it is so much more stable than you think it is. That's cool, so that is my favorite.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:Cool.
Speaker 3:So I don't know if you've ever seen this, but it's like a table thing, yeah, and a little conveyor belt is rolling away from you, it's got lines in it and you just roll. A 2p or a 10p rolls along this little track and then falls over absolutely between a line that says times 10 and you get a pound, okay.
Speaker 4:Okay, that's less exciting than all the other ones in their own way. Yeah, but and I hear you it's fulfilling for me oh see, we're looking for that little horse ride one where they all go yeah, yeah, I did like those. You gotta go with your big odds.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah thank you both so much for coming and sharing your time with us on what is. I don't know what order these go in, but let's say this is the last one.
Speaker 2:This is the last one, and what a finish and what a finish so so good. Thanks so much.
Speaker 3:So amazing, absolutely amazing, gwilym thanks for being my co-host and see you next year, same time, same place.
Speaker 4:No, no, no we'll be in London. We'll be in London, ok, so obviously not the same place and obviously not the same time, because it's a year away, yeah otherwise yes, different time, different place totally.
Speaker 2:We'll see you next time To our PZ, to our PZ, to our PZ.