Best IP advice: the winner!
IPKat - IP news and fun for everyone: “The best piece of intellectual property advice I ever heard” – that was the challenge facing entrants in the most recent IPKat competition, for which the prize is complimentary admission to CLT’s forthcoming Copying Without Infringing conference on Wednesday 26 November (details of the conference here). Many of the entrants being private practitioners, who prefer to sell their advice rather than give it away to readers of this blog, the IPKat received an unusually large proportion of entries that were either (i) anonymous or (ii) covered by a disclaimer in case anyone should seek to rely directly upon it. There were also a number of entries that the Kat had to disqualify for (i) not being over the 20-word limit or (ii) not being advice.
Disqualification for not being advice was the entry which the IPKat enjoyed the most. This was sent in by Andrew Evans, a commercial lawyer with the Environment Agency: “Probably the best IP joke … was from my lecturer Professor Amanda Harcourt, who taught me the copyright module on the Masters Degree in Music Management at Bucks College (now Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College). Surely worth a mention at least! Question–How long does it take to learn copyright law? Answer–Life plus 70 years!”.Of those that remained, the best were as follows:
Anonymous entries
The best intellectual property advice I’ve heard
Can’t you guess?
Seek professional help
And in the end pay less! (this was from an entrant who said he/she couldn’t take up the prize anyway)
Killing the creator is the traditional method of patent protection (from a literary soul, citing Terry Pratchett as authority for this proposition)
Mr Minister, a well administered intellectual poverty system will be crucial for your country’s future (this, the concluding remark by a senior official at a public event, was submitted by an entrant whose anonymity…