I am planning to stand for CIPA President in this year’s
elections. I have drafted a “manifesto”
of sorts, setting out what that might mean for the Institute. I wanted to make it public nice and early, so
that people had the chance to challenge and question me on it; to stand
against me if they preferred an alternative approach; or to stand for
Council or even as Vice-President if they were willing to help me implement it.
Here goes…
Presidential candidacy
Andrea Brewster manifesto
I intend to stand for the post of CIPA President in the 2015
elections.
There is no official job description for the President. So, I have put together some thoughts on the
type of President I might be capable of being and willing to be. I have included the activities I would like
to undertake, and the issues I would like to progress, if I am elected.
I should point out that many of these would build on, or
simply continue, the excellent work begun by my predecessors.
Please, judge me on these.
I hope that they will help you decide whether I am the right person for
the role, come the elections in May.
Leadership
I propose to be a President who leads. I will lead CIPA as an organisation, its
staff, its committees and its governing Council. I will take responsibility for making things
happen. I will consult with others, and
where appropriate I will hold them to account.
I will embrace, indeed promote, change, because I have seen
that change invigorates CIPA, and because change is what keeps us alert and in
touch. Ironically, a voice for change is
in this context a voice for continuity, because CIPA already is changing; it is growing; it is modernising. I do not want us to lose that momentum.
SILC & the Strategic Plan
I will push for adoption of the measures outlined in the
2014 Strategic Plan, and for prioritising and evaluating CIPA’s activities and
policies in line with it. I will ensure
it is reviewed and updated before the end of 2015, so that our targets remain
ambitious yet achievable, and aligned with both members’ views and external
developments.
I will ensure that the CIPA manifesto, which we are
currently drafting, is used to maximum effect, that it properly informs CIPA’s work
and that it too is updated after its first year.
I propose to establish a working group to monitor
forthcoming opportunities and threats for the UK profession – whether to do
with business practice, competition in the marketplace, regulation or any other
relevant issues – and to recommend strategies in response.
Meanwhile, I will aim to make SILC
(Status-Influence-Learning-Community) the bedrock of all CIPA’s activities and
policies.
Education, training & professional standards
“Learning” is arguably the most important of the four SILC
pillars. It raises our standards, and
thus our status, which in turn increases our influence. At the same time, working together to provide
and to participate in learning experiences fosters a greater sense of
community.
I will work closely with the new Education &
Professional Standards Committee and CIPA’s Head of Education. Together we hope to:
·
ensure that CIPA’s basic litigation skills course
is open for business by mid-2015.
·
prepare a set of “occupational standards” for
chartered patent attorneys, and use those standards to inform and shape CIPA’s
work on education, training (including CPD) and the promotion of high
professional standards.
·
introduce more “non-core” training, in
particular in business, commercial and client-facing skills.
·
push forward initiatives to improve training
standards across the profession.
·
ensure that an updated patent administrators’
course is ready in time for the September 2015 intake.
·
continue to professionalise CIPA’s education and
training activities.
I will also work with the Joint CIPA/ITMA Business Practice
Committee to support CIPA members more proactively, with early guidance and
template documents, in matters to do with regulatory compliance and business
practice.
Member engagement
In this context, I would hope to continue to do as President
what I have been doing as Vice-President.
All CIPA members should know who I am, what I stand for, what I am doing
and why. Equally, I need to be sure I am
doing what CIPA members want me to. And
that when I don’t, they are willing and able to tell me.
I will make an effort to meet and listen to CIPA members, in
private practice and industry, large organisations and small, throughout the
UK, whether students, associates or qualified attorneys. The “Meet-the-Members” campaign will
continue, until all the key regions of England, Scotland and Wales have been
visited and, as far as possible, all invitations to visit members have been accepted. I will of course channel feedback from those
visits to relevant committees, and propose new initiatives on the basis of
members’ suggestions and requests.
It is important to me that CIPA engages effectively with its
members outside London, and I would like to organise a system of regional
representatives (whether individual CIPA members or firms) to help with
this. I would also like to see “CIPA HQ”
developed as a space that is more welcoming, and more useful, for visiting
Institute members: I will work with the Chief Executive and his staff to try to
make that happen.
I will report regularly on my CIPA-related activities. I will support the new Informals Committee
and the new Administrators’ Committee, contributing to their publications,
events and other resources when they think it appropriate, to ensure that both
student and administrator members receive the support they need from their
Institute. In all of these areas I will
work closely with CIPA’s Membership Team and its Head of Media & PR, who
are striving to improve the Institute’s dialogue with its members and to
publicise more and better information about CIPA’s activities.
I promise to be approachable; to listen with humility and an
open mind; to talk candidly about CIPA’s current and proposed activities and to
encourage members to become involved. I
will try to motivate and to inspire those who work for or with CIPA.
I will never stand on ceremony. I will make every effort to continue
publishing the “Not-so-Secret Diary”, both in the Journal and on my blog, as a way of communicating about CIPA to
members who might not otherwise show an interest. Its tone will remain humorous,
tongue-in-cheek and slightly irreverent, because so many of you have been kind
enough to tell me that that’s what appeals.
Wider strategic issues
With the IP world expanding so rapidly around us, in terms
not only of its size and economic importance but also of its diversity and
complexity, I believe it is time for CIPA to tackle some big, strategic-level
questions about where we want our profession, and our Institute, to be
positioned in the future. Do we want to
be an exclusive guild of master craftsmen, setting the gold standard in our
“core” skills of drafting, prosecution and opinion work? Or do we want to be bolder, to retain our
high standards but at the same time to open our membership to other IP
professionals, to teach ourselves new skills, to appeal to more and different
clients and to promote ourselves outside of our traditional core competencies?
Personally, I am in favour of CIPA extending its remit to
all areas of IP and its membership to a wider range of IP professionals. Of course, at its core there will always be
the chartered patent attorney, but the patent attorney no longer works alone
and no longer sticks to drafting and prosecution, and I believe CIPA’s
constitution and governance should reflect that. Our Institute should be able to speak with
authority on all things IP-related, and to raise the status of the IP system as
a whole by sharing its expertise and its impeccably high standards. As the world of IP expands, I would rather
see CIPA at its centre than on the side-lines.
However, these questions affect the whole membership, and
all members should have their say. I pledge
to open a debate on the issue, and if necessary to hold a membership vote, the
result to inform our decisions about the direction in which CIPA travels.
Perhaps the answers can be incorporated into the new
Bye-laws; perhaps now is not the right time.
Again, my own view is that rewriting the Bye-laws (neither a frequent
nor a straightforward process) gives us a rare opportunity to modernise our
structure and our approach. If that
opportunity can be used to improve the long-term prospects for the UK IP
profession, so much the better. But in
any event, it is vital to ensure that the new Bye-laws provide sufficient
flexibility for future generations of CIPA members, allowing the Institute to
evolve to suit the changing IP landscape.
I will fight to ensure that this happens.
The new Bye-laws will of course be put out to members for
consultation before we even think about adopting them.
Management & internal governance
I would like to improve certain aspects of the way in which
Council functions, in particular its efficiency, its agility and its focus on
outcomes.
I expect the task of “leading” Council to be the hardest of
all. Our governing body embraces – and
rightly so – members from a range of backgrounds: consensus is often impossible,
but this must not be allowed to cause a reactive or overly cautious approach. I will therefore try to ensure that Council
makes quick but informed (and preferably bold) decisions; that it achieves
measurable progress for the Institute; and that it provides direction and
vision in the interests of our members’ long-term futures. I will encourage the adoption of individual
remits for Council members, and contribution and commitment levels in line with
those remits. I will also aim to tighten
up the procedural aspects of Council’s business.
In the interests of efficiency, I will encourage the
Internal Governance Committee (IGC) to delegate operational matters to the
Chief Executive and his staff. I will
support the executive team with their work on upgrading CIPA’s membership
database, website and general IT systems, and with the outsourcing of the Journal, to ensure that all of these
projects are completed before the end of 2015.
And I will see that the IGC and the Chief Executive together address the
issues surrounding the forthcoming expiry of CIPA’s lease on 95 Chancery Lane.
I will continue to help the IGC to tighten CIPA’s committee
structure, in particular by encouraging all committees to define their
objectives and terms of reference, in line with SILC, and by ensuring that all
are effectively chaired and productive.
I propose to instigate an annual meeting between the newly elected
officers and the committee chairs, in which to establish priorities for the
coming year, in line with the Strategic Plan and the Institute manifesto. I would like the committees to be a strong
and vital structure through which ordinary CIPA members interact with the
Institute and its work.
I will also continue to work closely with all CIPA
employees, and to encourage stronger and more communicative working
relationships between them and the committees.
Representation & ambassadorial
The I in SILC (Influence) is also vital to CIPA. The better we can engage with our external
stakeholders, the more influence we can exert on behalf of our members and
their clients.
As promised in my Vice-Presidential election manifesto, I
will strive to build relationships, not boundaries, on CIPA’s behalf. I will seek opportunities to collaborate with
other individuals and organisations, to build new bridges and rebuild old ones. I will do whatever I can to increase CIPA’s
influence, both in the UK and abroad; to raise awareness of IP; and to promote
the UK IP profession and the CPA “brand”.
With the help of relevant committees, the Chief Executive
and the other officers, I propose to:
·
continue to foster good working relations with
relevant external bodies, including ITMA, the IP Federation and FICPI; the UK
IPO and the EPO; overseas professional bodies and IP Offices; IPReg and the
LSB; and the IP Minister, the Professional and Business Services Council and
the UK Government generally.
·
encourage ongoing work on a CIPA “policy
playbook”, to which the committees contribute with official CIPA position
papers and briefing notes for both external and internal use.
·
continue CIPA’s efforts to lobby on behalf of
its members and their clients in issues related to the UPC, the EPO, regulation
and other areas identified as important in the recent manifesto-drafting
meeting.
·
ensure that diversity-related projects from the
January 2015 “round-table” meeting are implemented swiftly and
enthusiastically, in collaboration with the other participants such as the IPO,
ITMA, the IP Federation and FICPI-UK.
·
help CIPA’s Head of Media & PR to organising
more such events on significant IP topics of the day, to build CIPA’s
reputation as a thought leader in its field.
·
work to raise awareness of the IP professions
among potential new entrants, thus helping CIPA members in their recruitment
efforts.
I will seek to secure that the relationships we build are
with the Institute as a whole, or at least with a team of CIPA representatives,
and not just an individual President who holds office for only a year. Personally I have relatively little
experience in areas such as litigation, international IP systems and non-patent
IP. As President I would, however, have
the active support of the Immediate Past President, Catriona Hammer, of the
Honorary Secretary Chris Mercer, and of the many excellent specialist CIPA
committees (for example the Patents Committee, the Litigation Committee and the
International Liaison Committee), all of whom would be there to advise and
steer and to help me represent CIPA’s interests.
I also hope to continue to strengthen CIPA’s relationship
with IPReg, in particular by building a collaborative and business-like working
relationship with Michael Heap’s successor and by continuing to attempt a more
collaborative relationship with the Patent Regulation Board. It may be, however, that now is the time to establish
a different relationship with our regulator; if that is the case, I will not
shy away from beneficial new approaches.
Final words
If I am elected as President, I will lead CIPA with energy,
enthusiasm and commitment. But I will
only lead on things I believe are right for the Institute, and I will take
counsel on such issues from the CIPA staff, CIPA members, fellow Council
members and the committees, as well as from relevant external stakeholders. I will also delegate wherever possible to
those with more expertise than I have on specific projects.
I will be honest, approachable and considerate. I will bring originality and creativity to
the role. I will be open-minded and I
will try to think strategically, leaving detailed management and day-to-day
operations to those who are better placed to handle them. And I intend to be courageous, unafraid to
put my neck on the line, to question, to challenge, when it matters.
I ask for your support.
I intend to earn it.
Andrea Brewster