July 1, 2025 • 41 mins
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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I also use that as a classic example of never ask
your patent attorney formarketing advice, Because I was
like I'm like sitting herethinking who wants a
heart-shaped camera?
Literally, Lee Davis and GwilymRoberts are the two IPs in a
pod and you are listening to apodcast on intellectual property
(00:21):
Brought to you by the CharteredInstitute of Patent Attorneys.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
So Gwilym we never know which order these are going
to go out in.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
That's a pretty good point.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
So this might not go out in sequence, but if it does
go out in sequence, this is ourfinal in the podcast.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
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 (00:48):
I'm still emotional whatever, yeah you said you
don't have emotions well, I'vegot a tired emotion.
I've got a little bit ofelation.
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 (01:01):
Learnt a huge amount yes, that always happens,
doesn't?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
it.
Yeah, I think we've beenthrough an arc with San Diego
yeah, yeah it's so awful.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Kind of bizarrely, let's face it, we're trying to
go through like thisrollercoaster of about 24 hours.
How long have we beenpodcasting?
Maybe 36 hours, 36 hours soDifficult to really suggest that
there's been some massive, longthing.
We've done a lot of them.
Yeah, we started off.
It's a bit grey.
Yeah, it's a bit likePortsmouth, it's a bit like Rhyl
.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
But now you know, it's all sunny and we're on the
big strip and I don't know it'sbeen really good.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And I'm just looking forward to like maybe one or two
more drinks and then hittingsleeping.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
It's not true.
That's not what happens.
Three o'clock tomorrowafternoon we'll finally get back
to the hotel.
We know what happens.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
All the big parties are tonight so last year at
Atlanta we had the brilliantopportunity of speaking with a
few of our sibling professionalbodies from around the North
American continent.
So we did IPEC and we did AOPLAand we've done IPEC earlier
today, and now we've done IPICearlier today and now we've got
colleagues from AIPLA on.
Thank you for coming.
You're really welcome to thepodcast.
(02:09):
Would you mind introducingyourselves, if that's okay.
In whichever order you want togo?
Whoever wants to go first?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Sure, I'm Margaret Coulson.
I have a small IP prosecutionfirm in Denver, colorado.
Which brief commercial AIPLAspring 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 IPprosecution and I particularly
love designs of all types Designrights, design patents, design,
copyright, trade dress, allthat area where it intersects
(02:44):
and gets weird and hard and fun,so I love that I got involved
in AIPLA at my prior firm andthen I found you know- one of
the things I love about AIPLA isit has enough people and enough
specialists that you know.
For the first time I found agroup of people that were really
interested in designs and otherthings.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
People like you.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, people like me.
They're not quite as weird as Iam.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
We like that, we like that.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's good, that's good, you know when you're the
six-foot-tall blonde patentattorney, you're kind of used to
being the one-off, but so youknow I got involved.
I started I was chair of theIndustrial Designs Committee,
now the Design Rights Committee.
I then got involved in doingprofessional programs at AIPLA.
So AIPLA does a lot of CLEprogramming, so I ended up being
(03:35):
chair of the committee thatruns all that.
And then, as a punishment formy service, I got invited onto
the board of AIPLA, so this ismy third year on the board.
I will roll off this October.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
As in, you can't carry on.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
No, no.
Aipla board members have athree-year term Right okay.
And so the board at AIPLA isthe one that makes ultimate
decisions about any policypolicy comments, is the one that
makes ultimate decisions aboutany policy policy comments, so
we're the ones that give finalapproval to any comment letters
we send to your you know, otherprofessional organizations or
(04:13):
the USPTO.
We file a lot of amicus briefs,obviously mostly in the US
courts, but we recently did oneat the EPO on the issue of
definiteness and the wholeamending the spec.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
Yeah, oh good, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
The hardy perennial.
Oh yeah, yes, the hardyperennial.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
So, yeah, so we did it.
We'll see the AAPLA and the EPOBoard of Appeal has had a full
and frank exchange of views onthat topic.
So, yeah, it's a greatorganization, you know,
particularly coming from asmaller firm.
You know I get opportunities,like to be interviewed on a
podcast at Inta that I neverwould.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And you know I get a profile.
You know I've been invited tospeak all over the world because
of the work I've done at AIPLA.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
So, Lauren, what's your story?
Speaker 5 (05:05):
All right, so my story.
So I'm Lauren Emerson.
I'm with Leeson Ellis, which isan IP boutique in White Plains,
New York.
I co-chair our trademark andcopyright group there.
I've been with that firm foralmost eight years now.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
Got involved with AIPLA also when I was at my
prior firm.
So I've been involved withAIPLA for I'm not sure how many
years, but it's north of 10.
And I dove in on the copyrightside.
It was a fantastic copyrightcommittee and was very involved
with that for a number of years,eventually chaired that
committee.
(05:38):
I did a brief stint on ouramicus committee, which was
fantastic, and worked on somesome neat briefs there and uh,
and then join margaret on theboard.
I'm, I guess, coming up towardsthe end of my first year okay,
yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
So I know you're going to get down and dirty with
the techie stuff, but can I doa little bit of like aopla
governancey stuff?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
yeah, is that okay?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
so I'm quite interested, so it's super.
Uh.
So we don't have a board, wehave a council, but it performs
the same function and we don'thave any end term.
Whilst my council members servea three year term, they can
keep serving them and generallydo, which for me is useful,
because that means we get a bitof institutional kind of memory.
Longevity quite interested thatyou have to come off after
three years and what does thatmean?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
memory well, so we, I mean we have, we have like
vince is an employee of theorganization.
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, 12board members.
They were.
(06:40):
We roll on in groups of four,so you know, there's always a
new group of four coming in, sothere's always eight people that
have got one or two years in.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
So it provides a good transition.
There's always the new peoplethat are learning.
There's the people that arelike yeah, yeah, we've done this
before and it does that.
I mean, AIQLA tries really hardto, so we're really pretty
strict with our committees,Unless something goes unusually
(07:09):
wrong you're gonna spend twoyears as chair and you're
rolling off.
We want to give more people theopportunity to serve.
You know, what we find as anorganization is for people.
Just people need to be involvedto stay involved.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
There's demand for that.
So you got people wanting toget involved, to stay involved,
but there's demand for that.
So you've got people wanting toget onto the committees wanting
to get onto.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, absolutely, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
I mean so you can join.
So AIPLA is different in thatyou can join any committee you
want.
It's a checkbox on our website.
Once you're a member, you gocheck a box and you're a member
of whatever committee you wantto be, and we always encourage
people.
Go whatever committee you wantto be and we always encourage
people.
You know, go sign up, you'llget emails, you'll see what's
going on and you know if you getinvolved in a committee and,
(07:51):
you know, start helping withvarious projects.
You know at some point you'regoing to be asked, so hey, you
want to be part of leadership.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
And you know you get invited on as vice chair.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
You spend two years as vice chair and then, assuming
something hasn't gone horriblywrong, either professionally or
personally, then you wouldnormally serve two years as
chair.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
What we consider a very important part of our job,
as leadership is always lookingfor the next group Succession
planning, succession planning,succession planning.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So when you take over , as you know, when you get
pulled in as vice chair, youknow you're told we're going to
want to know two years from nowwho's going to be replacing you.
So start looking for thosepeople now.
And the same thing with chair.
You know, is your vice chairdoing a good job?
Do you think they should stepup job?
(08:46):
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 jokein in in membership, because you
know all professionalorganizations are having a hard
time with members.
I mean, it's going downworldwide and you know we want,
we want to, we joke that we wantto make aipla stick yeah we
want, we want you to stick.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
We're in a fortunate position where we're not going
down.
Well, yeah, it's weird, isn'tit?
We're still growing.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
There's good reason for it but it's good to see
against the general trend.
I was actually going to askabout sticking on a governance
team.
Yeah, you obviously arevolunteers.
Yeah, I think that's one of theinteresting things.
So when volunteers do something, it's because they've seen some
benefit out of it, either tothemselves or to the community.
What tends to drive people toget more involved with the
(09:30):
committees and with the board?
Speaker 5 (09:37):
I think it varies by individual, but I know I can
speak from my experience on theCopyright Committee.
It's had a group of very smart,very diligent copyright
attorneys who really, reallycare about the issues and jump
at the opportunity to weigh inon potential legislation or
amicus briefs and to sort ofreally collaborate with
like-minded people who are, youknow, equally invested in
improving the profession as awhole.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, and I think it's some of both.
I mean, again you get you knowagain, coming from a smaller
firm, you raise your profile alot.
You know, for me mean, againyou get you know, again, coming
from a smaller firm, you raiseyour profile a lot.
You know, for me, a huge partof it was, you know, designs has
become more and more prominent.
So back when I started doingdesign patents, they were the
weird kid in the corner thateverybody looked at funny and I
(10:22):
was like oh, you do designs.
Nobody ever infringes a designpatent, right.
And then Apple v Samsung cameout and everybody went wait,
there's a separate damagesstatute, yeah, and so it's
really raised the profile ofdesigns.
And one of the things I'mreally passionate about is
providing good designeducational content.
(10:45):
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 learnfrom will come top.
Sure, and as long as I'm doingthat, I might as well do it for
other people.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
I loved designs when I was training that's a while
ago, Because you used to get itby fax or something.
You get the drawings by fax andyou 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 andglue them on and they had to
draw blue lines around the bits.
You disclaimed it was the mosttherapeutic and relaxing.
It was fantastic arts andcrafts.
(11:20):
I love it.
It's cut to the stick and it'sreally, really good.
I know it's never done fromthat, but I'm out of interest.
Normally something happens inyour career that opens up that
realization of something youlove.
Yeah, when did that happen toyou?
When did design what?
Speaker 1 (11:34):
was the moment.
So about, though I starteddoing I got a client.
So accident of client.
Early in 2000, a client came into see me and Brian brian
kelligan he owns bison designsin colorado and he he was making
, he was a climber, a rockclimber, and he was making the
(11:55):
aluminum keychains for aluminumcarabiners for keychains, and he
had the dumb moment that, well,if, if they're now keychains,
they don't have to be in thefunctional shape they did.
You know, so we can make themfun shapes, right.
And so he, he went and he got,you know, he did a star and a
heart and a football, americanfootball, you know, in these
(12:19):
first set of shapes.
And you know he came in and waslike, how do we protect things?
And clearly a carabiner is nota 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 withbrian and I discovered I really
liked doing them and Idiscovered how powerful they.
And I also use that as aclassic example of never ask
(12:42):
your patent attorney formarketing advice, because I was
like I'm like sitting herethinking who wants a heart
shaped carabiner?
literally, he sold millions ofthem, right?
Millions of heart-shapedcarabiners, star-shaped
carabiners, dog bone shapedcarabiners.
They have one of everything,right?
They've sold millions of them,so never ask your patent
attorney for marketing, you getthe protection.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
The same question in two seconds.
Because carabiners can fleecivil war.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Did you just say that they're named carabiner because
of the carbine guns, carbineguns Really.
Well, why?
I don't remember what they were, the clips?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
The clips, the carbine guns.
Oh the climbing.
Oh right, Leather strap clonk,clonk, gun on.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Well, there you go.
That's what podcasts are for.
Thank you very much for theinformation.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
What do you?
Speaker 4 (13:29):
think of knowing that .
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Well, yeah, I've come from Portsmouth, I know my
military history a little bit.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Yeah.
So, Lauren, what was yourflashpoint moment?
Speaker 5 (13:39):
when you thought in terms of getting more interested
in copyright.
So you know.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Or actually top podcast tip.
Whichever story you want totell, don't worry, all right.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Whatever the question is, tell your story, all right,
fair enough.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
Yeah, so I was probably a young, maybe
mid-level associate theprimarily trademark practice
when Pinterest came out.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
And so, all of a sudden, we had a lot of
questions from clients aboutwell, what can we actually do
with these images?
Is this basically recreationalcopyright infringement, or are
we okay here Started fielding,that's a great phrase.
And thank you, I coined it.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (14:25):
And yeah, so started, you know, getting building more
and more copyright questionsand you know, as an associate
looking to distinguish yourself,I kind of dove in on that and
started taking on more and morecopyright work and it's fun.
It's really fun, especially nowwe're getting into all the AI
stuff.
So it's just an area that's?
Speaker 3 (14:43):
That was going to be my question.
Yeah, yeah, so I mean it's abiggie for us in the UK.
At the moment, the UK IPO isconsulting on copywriting AI,
similar here.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah, so what's the future?
Come on, look over the horizonfor us.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Look over the horizon , just succinctly, what's?
Speaker 3 (14:59):
the future Just a Well in the short term
everyone's going to.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
you know they're going to keep fighting it.
I mean multiple cases pendingin the US courts.
I would, I guess, be a littlebit surprised if they all come
out the same way, and so youexpect to see these issues kind
of start to work their way upthe system and see where it goes
.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, I mean, the US court system is not known for
its speediness or monetaryefficiency.
So you know, on the bright sidethere's a lot of lawyer work to
be done.
You know, it's a fullemployment act for lawyers at
the moment and we get to looklike we know what we're talking
about.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
So is AI's advocacy income.
Oh, wait, it's not bad 11podcasting, is it?
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Are you developing a policy position around AI and
copyright?
Do you have a position you'regoing to vaguely take, or is it
too early for that?
Speaker 5 (15:54):
I think it's too early for that position you're
going to take, or is it tooearly 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, toto try to to figure that out,
but it's a sort of a, a jointventure.
There's an ai uh task forcewithin the organization and then
, of course, the copyrightcommittee, and so you know.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
But we have, I think we've taken some early positions
early, yeah, but it's still.
The board has made someresolutions on ai.
I mean, a lot of what we'vebeen concerned about is ai use
by the office.
Yeah, okay yeah so you know, weknow they're using ai to do
searching and things like that,but none of us want to see the
(16:31):
ai trying to write the officeactions yeah because it's really
not there and you know thehallucinating stuff I mean.
I occasionally decide, you know,can you know go check?
You know, can chat gpt do myjob?
You know it's a really goodcreative writer.
I gotta give it that but, youknow when it completely
hallucinates sections of apatent yeah and it sounds really
(16:53):
plausible right it sounds likethe section of this patent that
you asked it to quote and thenyou go to search it to be able
to cite it and you're like thatphrase doesn't exist yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
But you get into some of the juicy sort of fair use.
Is it fair use, is it not?
And you're talking abouttraining the large language
models on copyrighted contentand things like that.
And for an organisation likeAIPLA, it's always interesting
to tackle questions like thatbecause our members come from
all industries, so we've gotfolks on the tech side and on
(17:27):
the content side trying to comeup with positions.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
That's a question I've always got for
organisations like yours andours actually, which is that
you've got all these differentpoints of view.
How do you reconcile them, howdo you kind of find them?
Do you look for consensus or doyou just find the main points
of view and express them?
How do you do it?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
I mean so at the board level.
It's by long, sometimes ugly,debates at the board.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
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 (18:03):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
And so we spend a lot of time.
Well, will you accept this?
Does this wording make you feelbetter?
Does this wording make you feelbetter?
But we try really hard on ourboard to have people from a
diverse set of law firms andin-house and all of that, so we
get all those views because wereally don't want to lose that.
(18:26):
You know we try really hard tobe an arbiter for a good ip
system that works well I wasgonna say so.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Sometimes we'll find ourselves in a position where we
can't get consensus, let alonea majority.
So sometimes, actually quiteoften, we want to put all views,
and that's what we do.
We say so these are theperspectives.
Yeah, this is how theprofession sees it through
different lenses Over to you.
Over to you.
Not all the views, maybe notall of you Any big semi-majority
(18:56):
news?
Speaker 4 (18:57):
We've been told they don't mind that.
Yeah, how is the B Quite wantto hear?
I won't mention that we have asister organisation, a sibling
organisation, I think, say inthe UK, where I get the feeling
sometimes they end upconsensus-ing it to death.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And there's almost nothing left.
That's always a tricky Toactually have an impact.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
It's so tricky, isn't ?
Speaker 5 (19:17):
it.
Yeah, I mean go ahead sometimeswhere we can reach.
You know, common ground is noton maybe, a particular view on
what the outcome should be, buton educating perhaps a court on
what some of the unintendedconsequences of going this way
or that way might be yeah, andwe do that a lot, like our rules
commentary.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
I mean the USPTO and the Copyright Office, to invoke
my Southern Heritage.
Bless their hearts.
They try hard but they'rethinking of it from their
operational point of view and wereally have to be there to say
this isn't going to work because, right, yeah, understood.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
You know and so you know and we have a really you
know, we have a long-standingrelationship 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 tryreally hard to keep that
relationship cordial andfriendly and all of that?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah, we understand, that, don't we yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
But on the other hand , if things are going, you know
there have been times when theoffice is going seriously
sideways and we're like, hey, no, this is not right, and you
know, most of the time it's youknow a lot of the time what we
say gets listened to.
Yeah, you know, and you knowfrom a you know from a fun
personal point of view.
(20:42):
You know I was on theIndustrial Designs Committee
when the Hague, us was joiningthe Hague Convention for the
Protection of Industrial Designsand the first proposed rules
came out and we were like wow,yeah, wait, hold on.
And so we sent in a whole bunchof comments of this needs to
change and this needs to change,and the office adopted our
(21:04):
position.
I mean, almost all of ourcomments showed up as part of
the final rules.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
That happens, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (21:10):
You know, almost all of our comments showed up in the
final rules and that's bothhelping the profession, helping
the office and it's a reallygreat feeling.
We spent a lot of time on thoserules.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Fairly, recently we put in a not an amicus brief to
the Unified Patent Court becauseit doesn't take amicus briefs.
So we wrote to the court and wegot a lovely letter back saying
can't look at this, yeah, wecan't have seen this because we
can't accept briefs.
And then the determination wasalmost word for word what we had
submitted.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
So you mentioned looking at international duties
and impact on the US.
You mentioned specifically theEPO.
Do you guys tend to senddocuments globally?
Who's that driven by?
Who's asking you to focus on anEPO issue?
To send documents globallywherever?
Who's that driven by?
Who's asking you to focus on anEPO issue?
Where does it come?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
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 inChina committee that looks for
things that we can comment on.
I know the.
Singapore office has reached outto 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 ofthe offices actively want our
(22:25):
comments, Some of the offices wefind out about it and we're
like, hey, we can and we try tolisten.
I mean, we have very activeinternational practitioners in
the organization and so we tryreally hard to listen to the
European things.
These guys aren't going tolisten.
Where we can comment is overhere.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
And part of the whole point of professional
organizations is to build thosebridges and to keep those doors
open and to try and promote.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
But that's a tough gig, isn't it?
Because that's a lot of work.
It's continuous work.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You can't let up no, no, I mean I was that, I was at
the.
I heard I were at the TM 5 andthe industrial design 5 met
before INTA and they had a usersgroup meeting on Saturday.
So we were there representingAI PLA, you know to, in front of
the five.
You know the five offices werethere to hear what user groups
(23:25):
wanted to say.
And so you know we, you know wegave them our comments on both
the designs.
One was on graphical userinterfaces, which is a huge
issue.
Designs is the least harmonizedarea of IP law.
What you think you know in theUS has nothing to do with what's
(23:46):
going on in other countries andyou know it's starting to
harmonize.
Everybody's starting to realizethis is important and they need
to pay attention.
But graphical user interfacesare one of those areas where
there's huge differences.
There's still countries thatyou can't protect them at all
and then there's some countriesthat are like, yep, this is
great, let's do all of them.
I mean Korea now acceptsanimated files so you can show a
(24:11):
whole animation of how your GUIworks.
That's quite cool.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Often, lee, you say we learn stuff on these podcasts
.
But obviously one of the thingsI love agree, yes, I agree.
But one thing I really loveactually is just how many
different internationalorganisations we talk to.
Yeah, and the passioneverywhere is brilliant.
It's really lovely that andthere is quite you get to feel
there's a real global communityof people who care about IP, and
(24:42):
usually in a really wellbalanced way.
You know you're going to havepeople who hate IP and you're
going to have people who abuseIP.
We don't tend to meet them.
We tend to meet the people inthe middle who understand that
it's there for a reason.
It works really well.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Ip has got such a network so I don't know if I'm
adding to what you've just saidor not.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Undoubtedly but I'm going to say it anyway.
I'm feeling augmented alreadyyou're augmented excellent.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Yeah, bless your graphical user interface.
So oh no, I forgot where.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
I was going to say no .
I think that is thoserelationships, and I think they
can be quite useful if you'remeeting a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Remember where I was going.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
And.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
I think we've heard it here Also the thing that most
people are looking for is thekind of holy grail of
harmonisation, isn't it?
You've said it we all acceptthat systems are different, that
there are these complexities,but actually most people would
like to find some degree ofharmonization in there somewhere
.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
I think so, and the was it.
Uh, hang on, we've, we've somany podcasts.
Yeah, we have wipe out.
Earlier on, yeah, they weresaying they were so chuffed
about two multinational treatiestraditional, traditional
knowledge.
And the design rights.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, the Riyadh design rights treaty happened in
November, and then thetraditional knowledge one
sometime around the same time.
I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Fairly close, weren't they?
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:10):
That's getting 193 countries to agree to a comment.
And they said in an age ofincreasing polarisation, it is
good to see, because I've beensaying for a few years we peaked
, colonisation peaked, but Ithink there's such a strong
community of people who wantstill to make it happen.
It's quite exciting, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (26:29):
no, I think it is, and I mean the design rights
treaty is a great example.
The design rights treaty has alot of very important things.
It covers graphical userinterfaces, it covers partial
designs, it covers having agrace period.
So the design rights treaty haswho was it the QO?
Speaker 4 (26:55):
That's not the European Actually.
No, we got some of them.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
But European designs have a grace period, right.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
They have a one-year grace period, like you guys do,
which?
Speaker 4 (27:03):
still scares us, though Scares us Still disagree
with it.
Anyway, that's just a personalthing.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
No, you know, you get five IP practitioners and we
don't talk and grab grace periodand you're going to get seven
opinions Indeed, indeed, yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Yeah, no, it's been good to see you.
Actually, I think theseconversations do give me a lot
of heart.
For all of that, I'm from thepatent world and that's got
nowhere for decades now.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah, maybe it's too complicated 40, 50 years of
harmonisation.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
Yeah, just not getting anywhere.
What gets me actually about thepatent system I'm off on one
now is how arbitrary maybe inall of our stuff there's some
arbitrary numbers in the patentsystem that make me laugh, for
example the one year priorityperiod Predicated on how long it
took a pony to get betweenLand's End and John O'Groats, or
something like that.
Publication period predicated onhow long it used to take to
typeset a patent, and the theduration 20 years probably
predicated on human generationyeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah
(28:02):
but I think what I love about it, though, is people accept these
harmonized rules at face valuewithout really questioning them,
and as you get into it a bitmore, you realize you never can,
because the moment you openthat debate, so some bits of the
pattern system.
I'm just talking, no.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
You are just talking now Is that?
Speaker 4 (28:20):
OK, it's fine.
Yeah, Some bits of the patternsystem I should interview you
one day.
Don't necessarily makecontemporary sense, but they
work and the harm of it isaround the world and in a sense,
that's the tricky bit, isn't it?
We've got to grab those momentswhen they're working.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Can I repeat a question that I asked of our
Canadian colleagues earlier on?
Yeah, so in the UK, and I wantto find out a little bit about
the position in the US now, andparticularly in the current
political climate.
Uh-uh, small people, no smallpeople.
In the political climate let'snot go big P.
So in the UK we have theInternational Property Office
and it performs largely twofunctions.
(28:55):
It's a business in governmentin that it's where you file your
patents and your trademarks andit makes money for government
in that way through filing feesetc.
But it's also the policy engineof government.
So it would be advising theminister and kind of the wider
kind of civil service team aboutIP issues, so that government
(29:16):
makes some reasonably sensibledecisions around IP, and our job
is to influence them in bothspheres.
It's to make sure that themechanics of the patent office
sorry, the IPO works for us as aprofession, but also to make
sure that when we're making lawand policy, it's good law and
policy in the interest not justof us but also the primary
(29:38):
beneficiary, the user of the ipsystem.
Yeah, yeah.
So what's this?
What's the position now in thein the us with uspto?
Because it's, I understand it'sslightly more political than
that, but I guess it'sperforming the same kind of
duality of function yeah, so Imean it.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
It's so, since the head of the USPTO is a political
appointee, so policy can shiftbetween administrations.
I mean there's a core set ofpeople that are sort of driving
it along.
There is a lot of, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Patents need to work for small business and all of
that, and business needscertainty.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
And business needs certainty for small business and
all of that and business needscertainty, and business needs
certainty.
And so you know, in the US Ithink it's much more most people
agree on the goals.
We're just arguing about howwe're going to get there, okay,
yeah, yeah.
You know, so you know to be.
You know like in the US, 101 iseligibility right and that is
its own flaming.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
I don't know, Flaming morass yeah yeah, flaming,
morass of you said flamingmorass.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
She gave this flaming .
I gave you morass, Poetic.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
You should collaborate more.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
You know of.
I mean, the Supreme Court isruled and the current standard
is so vague as to be unworkable,and so you get cases that come
out one way and come out anotherway and there's very little
predictability for business.
Yeah, and the supreme court hasmade it really clear they, very
they view this as an issue forcongress to fix okay, they're
(31:08):
not going to rule again okaythis.
You know eligibility is afundamental part of the patent
system.
There needs to be a legislativefix.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
It's not tidy.
They're not going to fix itwhich is somewhat rare in our.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Supreme Court to be like nope, you guys, we're not
touching it.
They're pretty willing to gothere.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
But in the eligibility world they've made
it very clear that this is aCongress issue to fix.
There are current proposals,draft legislation on trying to
fix it.
As you can imagine, that is anextraordinarily contentious
issue, you know, because they'rethe two big.
I mean in the US, eligibilityaffects two main groups of
(31:47):
people and that's biotech andsoftware.
Yeah, yeah and you know usmechanical people.
But I mean I do the other partof my practice that's an awful
lot of fun in the mechanicalutility patent world is I do
patents on amusement rides.
So you know you don't generallyhave an eligibility problem
(32:09):
with an amusement ride it's like, no, no, this is a thing and
it's you.
No, no, this is a thing andit's going.
You know.
But so, but certainly you knowmy software colleagues and my
biotech colleagues.
You know 101 is a huge issue.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
I was talking about amusement rides.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is so much fun, and so the
amusement ride industry has thebest conference, so they have.
Iapa, which is theInternational Association.
I'm forgetting the exact thing,but it's all amusement parks
and other fun, small attractionsand all of that.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
Where do they hold them Presumably at?
Speaker 1 (32:53):
In Orlando, they have them around the world, but the
biggest one is in Orlando inFlorida.
It's at the convention center,oh no.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
You were thinking this was happening on rides?
Speaker 1 (33:07):
No, but they have rides in the convention centre.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Back in the game.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
And it covers Everything From the rides To the
insurance, to the trinkets andtoys they give away in the games
, to the food.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
To the ticketing and the vendors call it that
Trinkets and toys they give awayin the games to the food.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Oh, the trinkets and toys.
Oh, my goodness.
And the vendors call it thatright.
It's trinkets and toys To thelike, the suits for the people
that dance around in a costume.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Oh wow, oh wow.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I'm at the wrong conference, and you know.
So, like you know, we can sellyou a bunny suit or a bear suit,
or you know, or the animatronicthings you know.
Somebody does it, of course.
No and it's this hugeconference, it's multiple floors
of the.
Orlando Convention Center.
(33:55):
They've had roller coasters setup in there.
They have all sorts of ridesset up in there.
They have the big VR gameswhere you're going through with
a headset on and shooting thingsand it is the most fun you will
ever ever have at a convention,which kind of makes sense.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
So next year then yes , it is in.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
November, the week before Thanksgiving.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
And you go there, I go there.
Do you go there with a littlebooth?
Speaker 1 (34:21):
No, so I'm there in support of my clients.
So, as with most convention, Ihave multiple clients in the
amusement ride industry umbecause there's not many.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
There's not many attorneys that specialize in
this and they're like you know.
So you know, hey, you know weneed to get a patent.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Who do you use?
Go talk to margaret.
They have an ip takedownprocedure, like most conventions
do.
So you know, I go walk thefloor and I look for things that
are infringing my clients'rights and I go talk to the very
nice people in IP enforcementwith a copy of the patent and a
you know.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Hey, this needs to come down and, and this is I
mean, are we talking aboutpatents for general roller
coasters, or patents fortrinkets or the whole?
Speaker 1 (35:01):
All of the above.
So ropes courses, rollercoasters, I'm so sick of
telecoms.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Look as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
I have the best job ever I get to learn about roller
coasters.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
I get to learn about design patents Now it really
sucked during COVID.
I've got to say that was anindustry that got really hard
hit.
We should have done thisearlier.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah, because because you know, I'm just about to do
that annoying thing that I do,which?
Speaker 3 (35:29):
is to say, one of my jobs is to keep time and we're
kind of near the end, but Idon'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 thecloser in a moment.
General question from both ofyour perspectives what's big on
our plas radar in terms ofthings that you want to get done
in the next 12 months or so?
Speaker 1 (35:44):
I mean so AI and the fair use question is a lot of
what's going on.
You know, trying stability iswhat's on a lot of our minds
these days.
You know, making sure that thesystem remains stable.
Okay, because the reality is,any of us can live with the
(36:08):
system as long as we know therules.
We may not like the rules, butyou know we're lawyers.
We work with rules, but if therules are continuously changing,
that's a problem.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Anything specific from the trademarks or copyright
perspective?
Lauren.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
I think that that's a lot of what the copyright side
of things is looking at.
Is that AI issue?
It's so pervasive, it's acrosseverything From a sort of you
know as an organisation.
As Margaret mentioned, it'sbecoming, I think, increasingly
challenging for IP organisationsto attract and retain members,
(36:41):
and so that stickiness is reallybig, and so one of the things
we tried is, historically, theorganization has had this
midwinter meeting as one of ourthree stated meetings, and this
January we tried an experimentof doing a different format,
which was really a leadershipforum where, instead of focusing
on the substantive IP issues,we focused on just different
(37:02):
leadership type issues, whichwas really neat and, I think,
figuring out sort of how to usethat time slot for, you know,
keeping the energy of theorganization going and
attracting new members and allof that, so that's been
something that we've beenthinking about quite a bit so
the closer?
Speaker 3 (37:22):
okay, you ready for this weather?
Yeah, so the way the closerworks is I've ready for this,
willem.
Yeah, so the way the closerworks is I've been listening to
everything we've said and I'vecome up with a largely
tangential but connected to whatyou'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 askyou.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
This is thinking time , by the way, so you've got to
think while I'm yeah, while he'sanswering, you get thinking
time you're going to know whereI'm going with this.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I'm going to say Crocodile, is that a ride or
something you could do at?
Speaker 4 (37:44):
a fairground.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Yeah, it is no, if that's the question so the
question is so it can either bea fairground ride or anything
anything else that you mighthave ever done in a fairground
or funfair.
What's your favourite funfair?
Speaker 4 (37:58):
type experience.
So in Hong Kong and we got aplace called Ocean Park.
You might know Ocean Park inHong Kong, which is a big, not
the Disneyland, it's the otherone, the bigger track from Hong
Kong Island and they had a waterthing where you went in big
rubber rings and the pool andthe slide and the pool and the
slide and the pool and the slide.
I remember going best time.
(38:19):
That's fantastic, definitely.
My happiness because quickly,william's theory on roller
coaster rides the reason rollercoaster rides are exciting is
because you're not sure whetheryou're going to die or not, and
hopefully you're not going todie.
Ergo they're not excitingunless you do die.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Sorry to all your clients look, a lot of
engineering goes in making surethat you feel like you're going
to die.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
It's amazing Sloan.
Speaker 5 (38:47):
I think my favorite also as a kid, there was sort of
a water park that had this wavepool.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (38:53):
I like the wave pool quite a bit.
Oh, that's quite fun.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Yeah yeah yeah, really dangerous.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
I think, they're dangerous.
It's been a while since I'vebeen in one.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
I'm terrified about what Margaret's going to say.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
She's got a lot of expertise here, so my favourite
is indoor skydiving.
Oh the tube thing the windtunnel.
So one of my clients is iFlyIndoor Skydiving.
They are the ones thatdeveloped I mean, indoor
skydiving has been around for along time but they're the ones
that first developed a reallycommercially successful, really
(39:26):
safe system.
Right right, right, and flyingin those wind tunnels is the
most fun.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
I can only imagine yeah, yeah, never done that it's
so much fun and it's so muchmore.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
So I mean everybody's like, oh, I'm going to be
scared and I'm like, no, it isso much more stable than you
think it is.
That's cool, so that is myfavorite.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
So I don't know if you've ever seen this, but it's
like a table thing, yeah, and alittle conveyor belt is rolling
away from you, it's got lines init and you just roll.
A 2p or a 10p rolls along thislittle track and then falls over
absolutely between a line thatsays times 10 and you get a
pound, okay.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
Okay, that's less exciting than all the other ones
in their own way.
Yeah, but and I hear you it'sfulfilling for me oh see, we're
looking for that little horseride one where they all go yeah,
yeah, I did like those.
You gotta go with your big odds.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah thank you both so much for
coming and sharing your timewith us on what is.
I don't know what order thesego in, but let's say this is the
last one.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
This is the last one, and what a finish and what a
finish so so good.
Thanks so much.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
So amazing, absolutely amazing, gwilym
thanks for being my co-host andsee you next year, same time,
same place.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
No, no, no we'll be in London.
We'll be in London, ok, soobviously 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 (41:17):
We'll see you next time To our PZ, to our PZ, to
our PZ.
I also use that as a classic example of never ask
your patent attorney formarketing advice, Because I was
like I'm like sitting herethinking who wants a
heart-shaped camera?
Literally, Lee Davis and GwilymRoberts are the two IPs in a
pod and you are listening to apodcast on intellectual property
(00:21):
Brought to you by the CharteredInstitute of Patent Attorneys.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
So Gwilym we never know which order these are going
to go out in.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
That's a pretty good point.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
So this might not go out in sequence, but if it does
go out in sequence, this is ourfinal in the podcast.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
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 (00:48):
I'm still emotional whatever, yeah you said you
don't have emotions well, I'vegot a tired emotion.
I've got a little bit ofelation.
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 (01:01):
Learnt a huge amount yes, that always happens,
doesn't?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
it.
Yeah, I think we've beenthrough an arc with San Diego
yeah, yeah it's so awful.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Kind of bizarrely, let's face it, we're trying to
go through like thisrollercoaster of about 24 hours.
How long have we beenpodcasting?
Maybe 36 hours, 36 hours soDifficult to really suggest that
there's been some massive, longthing.
We've done a lot of them.
Yeah, we started off.
It's a bit grey.
Yeah, it's a bit likePortsmouth, it's a bit like Rhyl
.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
But now you know, it's all sunny and we're on the
big strip and I don't know it'sbeen really good.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
And I'm just looking forward to like maybe one or two
more drinks and then hittingsleeping.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
It's not true.
That's not what happens.
Three o'clock tomorrowafternoon we'll finally get back
to the hotel.
We know what happens.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
All the big parties are tonight so last year at
Atlanta we had the brilliantopportunity of speaking with a
few of our sibling professionalbodies from around the North
American continent.
So we did IPEC and we did AOPLAand we've done IPEC earlier
today, and now we've done IPICearlier today and now we've got
colleagues from AIPLA on.
Thank you for coming.
You're really welcome to thepodcast.
(02:09):
Would you mind introducingyourselves, if that's okay.
In whichever order you want togo?
Whoever wants to go first?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Sure, I'm Margaret Coulson.
I have a small IP prosecutionfirm in Denver, colorado.
Which brief commercial AIPLAspring 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 IPprosecution and I particularly
love designs of all types Designrights, design patents, design,
copyright, trade dress, allthat area where it intersects
(02:44):
and gets weird and hard and fun,so I love that I got involved
in AIPLA at my prior firm andthen I found you know- one of
the things I love about AIPLA isit has enough people and enough
specialists that you know.
For the first time I found agroup of people that were really
interested in designs and otherthings.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
People like you.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, people like me.
They're not quite as weird as Iam.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
We like that, we like that.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's good, that's good, you know when you're the
six-foot-tall blonde patentattorney, you're kind of used to
being the one-off, but so youknow I got involved.
I started I was chair of theIndustrial Designs Committee,
now the Design Rights Committee.
I then got involved in doingprofessional programs at AIPLA.
So AIPLA does a lot of CLEprogramming, so I ended up being
(03:35):
chair of the committee thatruns all that.
And then, as a punishment formy service, I got invited onto
the board of AIPLA, so this ismy third year on the board.
I will roll off this October.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
As in, you can't carry on.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
No, no.
Aipla board members have athree-year term Right okay.
And so the board at AIPLA isthe one that makes ultimate
decisions about any policypolicy comments, is the one that
makes ultimate decisions aboutany policy policy comments, so
we're the ones that give finalapproval to any comment letters
we send to your you know, otherprofessional organizations or
(04:13):
the USPTO.
We file a lot of amicus briefs,obviously mostly in the US
courts, but we recently did oneat the EPO on the issue of
definiteness and the wholeamending the spec.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
Yeah, oh good, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
The hardy perennial.
Oh yeah, yes, the hardyperennial.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
So, yeah, so we did it.
We'll see the AAPLA and the EPOBoard of Appeal has had a full
and frank exchange of views onthat topic.
So, yeah, it's a greatorganization, you know,
particularly coming from asmaller firm.
You know I get opportunities,like to be interviewed on a
podcast at Inta that I neverwould.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And you know I get a profile.
You know I've been invited tospeak all over the world because
of the work I've done at AIPLA.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
So, Lauren, what's your story?
Speaker 5 (05:05):
All right, so my story.
So I'm Lauren Emerson.
I'm with Leeson Ellis, which isan IP boutique in White Plains,
New York.
I co-chair our trademark andcopyright group there.
I've been with that firm foralmost eight years now.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
Got involved with AIPLA also when I was at my
prior firm.
So I've been involved withAIPLA for I'm not sure how many
years, but it's north of 10.
And I dove in on the copyrightside.
It was a fantastic copyrightcommittee and was very involved
with that for a number of years,eventually chaired that
committee.
(05:38):
I did a brief stint on ouramicus committee, which was
fantastic, and worked on somesome neat briefs there and uh,
and then join margaret on theboard.
I'm, I guess, coming up towardsthe end of my first year okay,
yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
So I know you're going to get down and dirty with
the techie stuff, but can I doa little bit of like aopla
governancey stuff?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
yeah, is that okay?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
so I'm quite interested, so it's super.
Uh.
So we don't have a board, wehave a council, but it performs
the same function and we don'thave any end term.
Whilst my council members servea three year term, they can
keep serving them and generallydo, which for me is useful,
because that means we get a bitof institutional kind of memory.
Longevity quite interested thatyou have to come off after
three years and what does thatmean?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
memory well, so we, I mean we have, we have like
vince is an employee of theorganization.
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, 12board members.
They were.
(06:40):
We roll on in groups of four,so you know, there's always a
new group of four coming in, sothere's always eight people that
have got one or two years in.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
So it provides a good transition.
There's always the new peoplethat are learning.
There's the people that arelike yeah, yeah, we've done this
before and it does that.
I mean, AIQLA tries really hardto, so we're really pretty
strict with our committees,Unless something goes unusually
(07:09):
wrong you're gonna spend twoyears as chair and you're
rolling off.
We want to give more people theopportunity to serve.
You know, what we find as anorganization is for people.
Just people need to be involvedto stay involved.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
There's demand for that.
So you got people wanting toget involved, to stay involved,
but there's demand for that.
So you've got people wanting toget onto the committees wanting
to get onto.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, absolutely, you know, and.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
I mean so you can join.
So AIPLA is different in thatyou can join any committee you
want.
It's a checkbox on our website.
Once you're a member, you gocheck a box and you're a member
of whatever committee you wantto be, and we always encourage
people.
Go whatever committee you wantto be and we always encourage
people.
You know, go sign up, you'llget emails, you'll see what's
going on and you know if you getinvolved in a committee and,
(07:51):
you know, start helping withvarious projects.
You know at some point you'regoing to be asked, so hey, you
want to be part of leadership.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
And you know you get invited on as vice chair.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
You spend two years as vice chair and then, assuming
something hasn't gone horriblywrong, either professionally or
personally, then you wouldnormally serve two years as
chair.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
What we consider a very important part of our job,
as leadership is always lookingfor the next group Succession
planning, succession planning,succession planning.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
So when you take over , as you know, when you get
pulled in as vice chair, youknow you're told we're going to
want to know two years from nowwho's going to be replacing you.
So start looking for thosepeople now.
And the same thing with chair.
You know, is your vice chairdoing a good job?
Do you think they should stepup job?
(08:46):
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 jokein in in membership, because you
know all professionalorganizations are having a hard
time with members.
I mean, it's going downworldwide and you know we want,
we want to, we joke that we wantto make aipla stick yeah we
want, we want you to stick.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
We're in a fortunate position where we're not going
down.
Well, yeah, it's weird, isn'tit?
We're still growing.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
There's good reason for it but it's good to see
against the general trend.
I was actually going to askabout sticking on a governance
team.
Yeah, you obviously arevolunteers.
Yeah, I think that's one of theinteresting things.
So when volunteers do something, it's because they've seen some
benefit out of it, either tothemselves or to the community.
What tends to drive people toget more involved with the
(09:30):
committees and with the board?
Speaker 5 (09:37):
I think it varies by individual, but I know I can
speak from my experience on theCopyright Committee.
It's had a group of very smart,very diligent copyright
attorneys who really, reallycare about the issues and jump
at the opportunity to weigh inon potential legislation or
amicus briefs and to sort ofreally collaborate with
like-minded people who are, youknow, equally invested in
improving the profession as awhole.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, and I think it's some of both.
I mean, again you get you knowagain, coming from a smaller
firm, you raise your profile alot.
You know, for me mean, againyou get you know, again, coming
from a smaller firm, you raiseyour profile a lot.
You know, for me, a huge partof it was, you know, designs has
become more and more prominent.
So back when I started doingdesign patents, they were the
weird kid in the corner thateverybody looked at funny and I
(10:22):
was like oh, you do designs.
Nobody ever infringes a designpatent, right.
And then Apple v Samsung cameout and everybody went wait,
there's a separate damagesstatute, yeah, and so it's
really raised the profile ofdesigns.
And one of the things I'mreally passionate about is
providing good designeducational content.
(10:45):
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 learnfrom will come top.
Sure, and as long as I'm doingthat, I might as well do it for
other people.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
I loved designs when I was training that's a while
ago, Because you used to get itby fax or something.
You get the drawings by fax andyou 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 andglue them on and they had to
draw blue lines around the bits.
You disclaimed it was the mosttherapeutic and relaxing.
It was fantastic arts andcrafts.
(11:20):
I love it.
It's cut to the stick and it'sreally, really good.
I know it's never done fromthat, but I'm out of interest.
Normally something happens inyour career that opens up that
realization of something youlove.
Yeah, when did that happen toyou?
When did design what?
Speaker 1 (11:34):
was the moment.
So about, though I starteddoing I got a client.
So accident of client.
Early in 2000, a client came into see me and Brian brian
kelligan he owns bison designsin colorado and he he was making
, he was a climber, a rockclimber, and he was making the
(11:55):
aluminum keychains for aluminumcarabiners for keychains, and he
had the dumb moment that, well,if, if they're now keychains,
they don't have to be in thefunctional shape they did.
You know, so we can make themfun shapes, right.
And so he, he went and he got,you know, he did a star and a
heart and a football, americanfootball, you know, in these
(12:19):
first set of shapes.
And you know he came in and waslike, how do we protect things?
And clearly a carabiner is nota 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 withbrian and I discovered I really
liked doing them and Idiscovered how powerful they.
And I also use that as aclassic example of never ask
(12:42):
your patent attorney formarketing advice, because I was
like I'm like sitting herethinking who wants a heart
shaped carabiner?
literally, he sold millions ofthem, right?
Millions of heart-shapedcarabiners, star-shaped
carabiners, dog bone shapedcarabiners.
They have one of everything,right?
They've sold millions of them,so never ask your patent
attorney for marketing, you getthe protection.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
The same question in two seconds.
Because carabiners can fleecivil war.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Did you just say that they're named carabiner because
of the carbine guns, carbineguns Really.
Well, why?
I don't remember what they were, the clips?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
The clips, the carbine guns.
Oh the climbing.
Oh right, Leather strap clonk,clonk, gun on.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Well, there you go.
That's what podcasts are for.
Thank you very much for theinformation.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
What do you?
Speaker 4 (13:29):
think of knowing that .
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Well, yeah, I've come from Portsmouth, I know my
military history a little bit.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Yeah.
So, Lauren, what was yourflashpoint moment?
Speaker 5 (13:39):
when you thought in terms of getting more interested
in copyright.
So you know.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Or actually top podcast tip.
Whichever story you want totell, don't worry, all right.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Whatever the question is, tell your story, all right,
fair enough.
Speaker 5 (13:53):
Yeah, so I was probably a young, maybe
mid-level associate theprimarily trademark practice
when Pinterest came out.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
And so, all of a sudden, we had a lot of
questions from clients aboutwell, what can we actually do
with these images?
Is this basically recreationalcopyright infringement, or are
we okay here Started fielding,that's a great phrase.
And thank you, I coined it.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (14:25):
And yeah, so started, you know, getting building more
and more copyright questionsand you know, as an associate
looking to distinguish yourself,I kind of dove in on that and
started taking on more and morecopyright work and it's fun.
It's really fun, especially nowwe're getting into all the AI
stuff.
So it's just an area that's?
Speaker 3 (14:43):
That was going to be my question.
Yeah, yeah, so I mean it's abiggie for us in the UK.
At the moment, the UK IPO isconsulting on copywriting AI,
similar here.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah, so what's the future?
Come on, look over the horizonfor us.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Look over the horizon , just succinctly, what's?
Speaker 3 (14:59):
the future Just a Well in the short term
everyone's going to.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
you know they're going to keep fighting it.
I mean multiple cases pendingin the US courts.
I would, I guess, be a littlebit surprised if they all come
out the same way, and so youexpect to see these issues kind
of start to work their way upthe system and see where it goes
.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, I mean, the US court system is not known for
its speediness or monetaryefficiency.
So you know, on the bright sidethere's a lot of lawyer work to
be done.
You know, it's a fullemployment act for lawyers at
the moment and we get to looklike we know what we're talking
about.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
So is AI's advocacy income.
Oh, wait, it's not bad 11podcasting, is it?
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Are you developing a policy position around AI and
copyright?
Do you have a position you'regoing to vaguely take, or is it
too early for that?
Speaker 5 (15:54):
I think it's too early for that position you're
going to take, or is it tooearly 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, toto try to to figure that out,
but it's a sort of a, a jointventure.
There's an ai uh task forcewithin the organization and then
, of course, the copyrightcommittee, and so you know.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
But we have, I think we've taken some early positions
early, yeah, but it's still.
The board has made someresolutions on ai.
I mean, a lot of what we'vebeen concerned about is ai use
by the office.
Yeah, okay yeah so you know, weknow they're using ai to do
searching and things like that,but none of us want to see the
(16:31):
ai trying to write the officeactions yeah because it's really
not there and you know thehallucinating stuff I mean.
I occasionally decide, you know,can you know go check?
You know, can chat gpt do myjob?
You know it's a really goodcreative writer.
I gotta give it that but, youknow when it completely
hallucinates sections of apatent yeah and it sounds really
(16:53):
plausible right it sounds likethe section of this patent that
you asked it to quote and thenyou go to search it to be able
to cite it and you're like thatphrase doesn't exist yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
But you get into some of the juicy sort of fair use.
Is it fair use, is it not?
And you're talking abouttraining the large language
models on copyrighted contentand things like that.
And for an organisation likeAIPLA, it's always interesting
to tackle questions like thatbecause our members come from
all industries, so we've gotfolks on the tech side and on
(17:27):
the content side trying to comeup with positions.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
That's a question I've always got for
organisations like yours andours actually, which is that
you've got all these differentpoints of view.
How do you reconcile them, howdo you kind of find them?
Do you look for consensus or doyou just find the main points
of view and express them?
How do you do it?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
I mean so at the board level.
It's by long, sometimes ugly,debates at the board.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
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 (18:03):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
And so we spend a lot of time.
Well, will you accept this?
Does this wording make you feelbetter?
Does this wording make you feelbetter?
But we try really hard on ourboard to have people from a
diverse set of law firms andin-house and all of that, so we
get all those views because wereally don't want to lose that.
(18:26):
You know we try really hard tobe an arbiter for a good ip
system that works well I wasgonna say so.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Sometimes we'll find ourselves in a position where we
can't get consensus, let alonea majority.
So sometimes, actually quiteoften, we want to put all views,
and that's what we do.
We say so these are theperspectives.
Yeah, this is how theprofession sees it through
different lenses Over to you.
Over to you.
Not all the views, maybe notall of you Any big semi-majority
(18:56):
news?
Speaker 4 (18:57):
We've been told they don't mind that.
Yeah, how is the B Quite wantto hear?
I won't mention that we have asister organisation, a sibling
organisation, I think, say inthe UK, where I get the feeling
sometimes they end upconsensus-ing it to death.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
And there's almost nothing left.
That's always a tricky Toactually have an impact.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
It's so tricky, isn't ?
Speaker 5 (19:17):
it.
Yeah, I mean go ahead sometimeswhere we can reach.
You know, common ground is noton maybe, a particular view on
what the outcome should be, buton educating perhaps a court on
what some of the unintendedconsequences of going this way
or that way might be yeah, andwe do that a lot, like our rules
commentary.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
I mean the USPTO and the Copyright Office, to invoke
my Southern Heritage.
Bless their hearts.
They try hard but they'rethinking of it from their
operational point of view and wereally have to be there to say
this isn't going to work because, right, yeah, understood.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
You know and so you know and we have a really you
know, we have a long-standingrelationship 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 tryreally hard to keep that
relationship cordial andfriendly and all of that?
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah, we understand, that, don't we yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
But on the other hand , if things are going, you know
there have been times when theoffice is going seriously
sideways and we're like, hey, no, this is not right, and you
know, most of the time it's youknow a lot of the time what we
say gets listened to.
Yeah, you know, and you knowfrom a you know from a fun
personal point of view.
(20:42):
You know I was on theIndustrial Designs Committee
when the Hague, us was joiningthe Hague Convention for the
Protection of Industrial Designsand the first proposed rules
came out and we were like wow,yeah, wait, hold on.
And so we sent in a whole bunchof comments of this needs to
change and this needs to change,and the office adopted our
(21:04):
position.
I mean, almost all of ourcomments showed up as part of
the final rules.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
That happens, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (21:10):
You know, almost all of our comments showed up in the
final rules and that's bothhelping the profession, helping
the office and it's a reallygreat feeling.
We spent a lot of time on thoserules.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Fairly, recently we put in a not an amicus brief to
the Unified Patent Court becauseit doesn't take amicus briefs.
So we wrote to the court and wegot a lovely letter back saying
can't look at this, yeah, wecan't have seen this because we
can't accept briefs.
And then the determination wasalmost word for word what we had
submitted.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
So you mentioned looking at international duties
and impact on the US.
You mentioned specifically theEPO.
Do you guys tend to senddocuments globally?
Who's that driven by?
Who's asking you to focus on anEPO issue?
To send documents globallywherever?
Who's that driven by?
Who's asking you to focus on anEPO issue?
Where does it come?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
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 inChina committee that looks for
things that we can comment on.
I know the.
Singapore office has reached outto 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 ofthe offices actively want our
(22:25):
comments, Some of the offices wefind out about it and we're
like, hey, we can and we try tolisten.
I mean, we have very activeinternational practitioners in
the organization and so we tryreally hard to listen to the
European things.
These guys aren't going tolisten.
Where we can comment is overhere.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
And part of the whole point of professional
organizations is to build thosebridges and to keep those doors
open and to try and promote.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
But that's a tough gig, isn't it?
Because that's a lot of work.
It's continuous work.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
You can't let up no, no, I mean I was that, I was at
the.
I heard I were at the TM 5 andthe industrial design 5 met
before INTA and they had a usersgroup meeting on Saturday.
So we were there representingAI PLA, you know to, in front of
the five.
You know the five offices werethere to hear what user groups
(23:25):
wanted to say.
And so you know we, you know wegave them our comments on both
the designs.
One was on graphical userinterfaces, which is a huge
issue.
Designs is the least harmonizedarea of IP law.
What you think you know in theUS has nothing to do with what's
(23:46):
going on in other countries andyou know it's starting to
harmonize.
Everybody's starting to realizethis is important and they need
to pay attention.
But graphical user interfacesare one of those areas where
there's huge differences.
There's still countries thatyou can't protect them at all
and then there's some countriesthat are like, yep, this is
great, let's do all of them.
I mean Korea now acceptsanimated files so you can show a
(24:11):
whole animation of how your GUIworks.
That's quite cool.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Often, lee, you say we learn stuff on these podcasts
.
But obviously one of the thingsI love agree, yes, I agree.
But one thing I really loveactually is just how many
different internationalorganisations we talk to.
Yeah, and the passioneverywhere is brilliant.
It's really lovely that andthere is quite you get to feel
there's a real global communityof people who care about IP, and
(24:42):
usually in a really wellbalanced way.
You know you're going to havepeople who hate IP and you're
going to have people who abuseIP.
We don't tend to meet them.
We tend to meet the people inthe middle who understand that
it's there for a reason.
It works really well.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Ip has got such a network so I don't know if I'm
adding to what you've just saidor not.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Undoubtedly but I'm going to say it anyway.
I'm feeling augmented alreadyyou're augmented excellent.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Yeah, bless your graphical user interface.
So oh no, I forgot where.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
I was going to say no .
I think that is thoserelationships, and I think they
can be quite useful if you'remeeting a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Remember where I was going.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
And.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
I think we've heard it here Also the thing that most
people are looking for is thekind of holy grail of
harmonisation, isn't it?
You've said it we all acceptthat systems are different, that
there are these complexities,but actually most people would
like to find some degree ofharmonization in there somewhere
.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
I think so, and the was it.
Uh, hang on, we've, we've somany podcasts.
Yeah, we have wipe out.
Earlier on, yeah, they weresaying they were so chuffed
about two multinational treatiestraditional, traditional
knowledge.
And the design rights.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, the Riyadh design rights treaty happened in
November, and then thetraditional knowledge one
sometime around the same time.
I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Fairly close, weren't they?
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:10):
That's getting 193 countries to agree to a comment.
And they said in an age ofincreasing polarisation, it is
good to see, because I've beensaying for a few years we peaked
, colonisation peaked, but Ithink there's such a strong
community of people who wantstill to make it happen.
It's quite exciting, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (26:29):
no, I think it is, and I mean the design rights
treaty is a great example.
The design rights treaty has alot of very important things.
It covers graphical userinterfaces, it covers partial
designs, it covers having agrace period.
So the design rights treaty haswho was it the QO?
Speaker 4 (26:55):
That's not the European Actually.
No, we got some of them.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
But European designs have a grace period, right.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
They have a one-year grace period, like you guys do,
which?
Speaker 4 (27:03):
still scares us, though Scares us Still disagree
with it.
Anyway, that's just a personalthing.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
No, you know, you get five IP practitioners and we
don't talk and grab grace periodand you're going to get seven
opinions Indeed, indeed, yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Yeah, no, it's been good to see you.
Actually, I think theseconversations do give me a lot
of heart.
For all of that, I'm from thepatent world and that's got
nowhere for decades now.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah, maybe it's too complicated 40, 50 years of
harmonisation.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
Yeah, just not getting anywhere.
What gets me actually about thepatent system I'm off on one
now is how arbitrary maybe inall of our stuff there's some
arbitrary numbers in the patentsystem that make me laugh, for
example the one year priorityperiod Predicated on how long it
took a pony to get betweenLand's End and John O'Groats, or
something like that.
Publication period predicated onhow long it used to take to
typeset a patent, and the theduration 20 years probably
predicated on human generationyeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah
(28:02):
but I think what I love about it, though, is people accept these
harmonized rules at face valuewithout really questioning them,
and as you get into it a bitmore, you realize you never can,
because the moment you openthat debate, so some bits of the
pattern system.
I'm just talking, no.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
You are just talking now Is that?
Speaker 4 (28:20):
OK, it's fine.
Yeah, Some bits of the patternsystem I should interview you
one day.
Don't necessarily makecontemporary sense, but they
work and the harm of it isaround the world and in a sense,
that's the tricky bit, isn't it?
We've got to grab those momentswhen they're working.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Can I repeat a question that I asked of our
Canadian colleagues earlier on?
Yeah, so in the UK, and I wantto find out a little bit about
the position in the US now, andparticularly in the current
political climate.
Uh-uh, small people, no smallpeople.
In the political climate let'snot go big P.
So in the UK we have theInternational Property Office
and it performs largely twofunctions.
(28:55):
It's a business in governmentin that it's where you file your
patents and your trademarks andit makes money for government
in that way through filing feesetc.
But it's also the policy engineof government.
So it would be advising theminister and kind of the wider
kind of civil service team aboutIP issues, so that government
(29:16):
makes some reasonably sensibledecisions around IP, and our job
is to influence them in bothspheres.
It's to make sure that themechanics of the patent office
sorry, the IPO works for us as aprofession, but also to make
sure that when we're making lawand policy, it's good law and
policy in the interest not justof us but also the primary
(29:38):
beneficiary, the user of the ipsystem.
Yeah, yeah.
So what's this?
What's the position now in thein the us with uspto?
Because it's, I understand it'sslightly more political than
that, but I guess it'sperforming the same kind of
duality of function yeah, so Imean it.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
It's so, since the head of the USPTO is a political
appointee, so policy can shiftbetween administrations.
I mean there's a core set ofpeople that are sort of driving
it along.
There is a lot of, you know.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Patents need to work for small business and all of
that, and business needscertainty.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
And business needs certainty for small business and
all of that and business needscertainty, and business needs
certainty.
And so you know, in the US Ithink it's much more most people
agree on the goals.
We're just arguing about howwe're going to get there, okay,
yeah, yeah.
You know, so you know to be.
You know like in the US, 101 iseligibility right and that is
its own flaming.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
I don't know, Flaming morass yeah yeah, flaming,
morass of you said flamingmorass.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
She gave this flaming .
I gave you morass, Poetic.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
You should collaborate more.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
You know of.
I mean, the Supreme Court isruled and the current standard
is so vague as to be unworkable,and so you get cases that come
out one way and come out anotherway and there's very little
predictability for business.
Yeah, and the supreme court hasmade it really clear they, very
they view this as an issue forcongress to fix okay, they're
(31:08):
not going to rule again okaythis.
You know eligibility is afundamental part of the patent
system.
There needs to be a legislativefix.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
It's not tidy.
They're not going to fix itwhich is somewhat rare in our.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Supreme Court to be like nope, you guys, we're not
touching it.
They're pretty willing to gothere.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
But in the eligibility world they've made
it very clear that this is aCongress issue to fix.
There are current proposals,draft legislation on trying to
fix it.
As you can imagine, that is anextraordinarily contentious
issue, you know, because they'rethe two big.
I mean in the US, eligibilityaffects two main groups of
(31:47):
people and that's biotech andsoftware.
Yeah, yeah and you know usmechanical people.
But I mean I do the other partof my practice that's an awful
lot of fun in the mechanicalutility patent world is I do
patents on amusement rides.
So you know you don't generallyhave an eligibility problem
(32:09):
with an amusement ride it's like, no, no, this is a thing and
it's you.
No, no, this is a thing andit's going.
You know.
But so, but certainly you knowmy software colleagues and my
biotech colleagues.
You know 101 is a huge issue.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
I was talking about amusement rides.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is so much fun, and so the
amusement ride industry has thebest conference, so they have.
Iapa, which is theInternational Association.
I'm forgetting the exact thing,but it's all amusement parks
and other fun, small attractionsand all of that.
Speaker 4 (32:51):
Where do they hold them Presumably at?
Speaker 1 (32:53):
In Orlando, they have them around the world, but the
biggest one is in Orlando inFlorida.
It's at the convention center,oh no.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
You were thinking this was happening on rides?
Speaker 1 (33:07):
No, but they have rides in the convention centre.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Back in the game.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
And it covers Everything From the rides To the
insurance, to the trinkets andtoys they give away in the games
, to the food.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
To the ticketing and the vendors call it that
Trinkets and toys they give awayin the games to the food.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Oh, the trinkets and toys.
Oh, my goodness.
And the vendors call it thatright.
It's trinkets and toys To thelike, the suits for the people
that dance around in a costume.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Oh wow, oh wow.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I'm at the wrong conference, and you know.
So, like you know, we can sellyou a bunny suit or a bear suit,
or you know, or the animatronicthings you know.
Somebody does it, of course.
No and it's this hugeconference, it's multiple floors
of the.
Orlando Convention Center.
(33:55):
They've had roller coasters setup in there.
They have all sorts of ridesset up in there.
They have the big VR gameswhere you're going through with
a headset on and shooting thingsand it is the most fun you will
ever ever have at a convention,which kind of makes sense.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
So next year then yes , it is in.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
November, the week before Thanksgiving.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
And you go there, I go there.
Do you go there with a littlebooth?
Speaker 1 (34:21):
No, so I'm there in support of my clients.
So, as with most convention, Ihave multiple clients in the
amusement ride industry umbecause there's not many.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
There's not many attorneys that specialize in
this and they're like you know.
So you know, hey, you know weneed to get a patent.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Who do you use?
Go talk to margaret.
They have an ip takedownprocedure, like most conventions
do.
So you know, I go walk thefloor and I look for things that
are infringing my clients'rights and I go talk to the very
nice people in IP enforcementwith a copy of the patent and a
you know.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Hey, this needs to come down and, and this is I
mean, are we talking aboutpatents for general roller
coasters, or patents fortrinkets or the whole?
Speaker 1 (35:01):
All of the above.
So ropes courses, rollercoasters, I'm so sick of
telecoms.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Look as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
I have the best job ever I get to learn about roller
coasters.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
I get to learn about design patents Now it really
sucked during COVID.
I've got to say that was anindustry that got really hard
hit.
We should have done thisearlier.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah, because because you know, I'm just about to do
that annoying thing that I do,which?
Speaker 3 (35:29):
is to say, one of my jobs is to keep time and we're
kind of near the end, but Idon'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 thecloser in a moment.
General question from both ofyour perspectives what's big on
our plas radar in terms ofthings that you want to get done
in the next 12 months or so?
Speaker 1 (35:44):
I mean so AI and the fair use question is a lot of
what's going on.
You know, trying stability iswhat's on a lot of our minds
these days.
You know, making sure that thesystem remains stable.
Okay, because the reality is,any of us can live with the
(36:08):
system as long as we know therules.
We may not like the rules, butyou know we're lawyers.
We work with rules, but if therules are continuously changing,
that's a problem.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Anything specific from the trademarks or copyright
perspective?
Lauren.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
I think that that's a lot of what the copyright side
of things is looking at.
Is that AI issue?
It's so pervasive, it's acrosseverything From a sort of you
know as an organisation.
As Margaret mentioned, it'sbecoming, I think, increasingly
challenging for IP organisationsto attract and retain members,
(36:41):
and so that stickiness is reallybig, and so one of the things
we tried is, historically, theorganization has had this
midwinter meeting as one of ourthree stated meetings, and this
January we tried an experimentof doing a different format,
which was really a leadershipforum where, instead of focusing
on the substantive IP issues,we focused on just different
(37:02):
leadership type issues, whichwas really neat and, I think,
figuring out sort of how to usethat time slot for, you know,
keeping the energy of theorganization going and
attracting new members and allof that, so that's been
something that we've beenthinking about quite a bit so
the closer?
Speaker 3 (37:22):
okay, you ready for this weather?
Yeah, so the way the closerworks is I've ready for this,
willem.
Yeah, so the way the closerworks is I've been listening to
everything we've said and I'vecome up with a largely
tangential but connected to whatyou'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 askyou.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
This is thinking time , by the way, so you've got to
think while I'm yeah, while he'sanswering, you get thinking
time you're going to know whereI'm going with this.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I'm going to say Crocodile, is that a ride or
something you could do at?
Speaker 4 (37:44):
a fairground.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Yeah, it is no, if that's the question so the
question is so it can either bea fairground ride or anything
anything else that you mighthave ever done in a fairground
or funfair.
What's your favourite funfair?
Speaker 4 (37:58):
type experience.
So in Hong Kong and we got aplace called Ocean Park.
You might know Ocean Park inHong Kong, which is a big, not
the Disneyland, it's the otherone, the bigger track from Hong
Kong Island and they had a waterthing where you went in big
rubber rings and the pool andthe slide and the pool and the
slide and the pool and the slide.
I remember going best time.
(38:19):
That's fantastic, definitely.
My happiness because quickly,william's theory on roller
coaster rides the reason rollercoaster rides are exciting is
because you're not sure whetheryou're going to die or not, and
hopefully you're not going todie.
Ergo they're not excitingunless you do die.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Sorry to all your clients look, a lot of
engineering goes in making surethat you feel like you're going
to die.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
It's amazing Sloan.
Speaker 5 (38:47):
I think my favorite also as a kid, there was sort of
a water park that had this wavepool.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (38:53):
I like the wave pool quite a bit.
Oh, that's quite fun.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Yeah yeah yeah, really dangerous.
Speaker 5 (38:57):
I think, they're dangerous.
It's been a while since I'vebeen in one.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
I'm terrified about what Margaret's going to say.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
She's got a lot of expertise here, so my favourite
is indoor skydiving.
Oh the tube thing the windtunnel.
So one of my clients is iFlyIndoor Skydiving.
They are the ones thatdeveloped I mean, indoor
skydiving has been around for along time but they're the ones
that first developed a reallycommercially successful, really
(39:26):
safe system.
Right right, right, and flyingin those wind tunnels is the
most fun.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
I can only imagine yeah, yeah, never done that it's
so much fun and it's so muchmore.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
So I mean everybody's like, oh, I'm going to be
scared and I'm like, no, it isso much more stable than you
think it is.
That's cool, so that is myfavorite.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
So I don't know if you've ever seen this, but it's
like a table thing, yeah, and alittle conveyor belt is rolling
away from you, it's got lines init and you just roll.
A 2p or a 10p rolls along thislittle track and then falls over
absolutely between a line thatsays times 10 and you get a
pound, okay.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
Okay, that's less exciting than all the other ones
in their own way.
Yeah, but and I hear you it'sfulfilling for me oh see, we're
looking for that little horseride one where they all go yeah,
yeah, I did like those.
You gotta go with your big odds.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah thank you both so much for
coming and sharing your timewith us on what is.
I don't know what order thesego in, but let's say this is the
last one.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
This is the last one, and what a finish and what a
finish so so good.
Thanks so much.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
So amazing, absolutely amazing, gwilym
thanks for being my co-host andsee you next year, same time,
same place.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
No, no, no we'll be in London.
We'll be in London, ok, soobviously 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 (41:17):
We'll see you next time To our PZ, to our PZ, to
our PZ.
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