IP Centre of Excellence

Excellent!


I now have some pictures of the launch of the IP Centre of Excellence in Leeds on 24 Nov 2005. This one shows
* Michael Harrison president of the CIPA for this year
* Diana Wallis MEP one of the Euro MPs for Yorkshire and Humberside who is also a solicitor
* Jonathan Haines the head of the BPP Law School in Leeds
* Richard Kempner head of IP at Addleshaws in Leeds
* Peter Hayward head of litigation at the Patent Office; and
* Ian Lewis director of Miller Insurance.

The next two pictures show Peter and Ian in full flow. I am the bloke in the chair.

It was a really good evening and Diana Wallis MEP gave us a plug on her website and email to constituents: "Euro MP supports Intellectual Property initiatives in Leeds".

I regret that I didn't get to meet King Puss (Prof. Jeremy Phillips) or Ilanah today after all. I had set off for the launch of Oxford University Press's Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice today but could not get beyond Leicester.

According to the local radio, a lorry had crashed with a van at about 09:45 blocking the whole southbound carriageway of the M1. That coincided with a derailment on the Midland Mainline network so the only way to get to London from South Yorkshire or the East Midlands was by car. I tried a "bison fute" style detour (which usually works in France) but the Leicester ring road was just as bad as the motorway. They do some things better in France. I had to abandon my trip after the BBC reported that the motorway would not reopen before the rush hour and there was slow moving traffic on every trunk road out of town. When I last checked the BBC travel report for Leicester the MI was still closed and there was still heavy traffic on the southbound roads.

People ask me why I practise in the North rather than in London. Well that is a very big part of the answer. I have to say that traffic is pretty grim in London. I don't know how they think they will cope with the Olympics. Paris could have managed it with ease. So, too, could Manchester. Indeed, my birthplace did a pretty good job with the Commonwealth Games. The conventional wisdom is that London is the only city in the UK that could win the games. I am not so sure. Atlanta, Barcelona, LA and Munich are not capitals or even the largest commercial centre in their respective countries.

For those wondering about the paucity of posts, I had been working on material for my .law.pro and .eu websites and, of course, advising, advocating, mediating, opining and top level domain name dispute resolving. I shall soon be back to 3 or 4 posts a day.



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