Save the Date- Thursday 26 February 2009 5pm

The next SOLO group meeting will take place in the Rotunda room of the old patent office in London pictured to the right (the Rotunda is at the top of the stairs). The street address is 25 Southampton buildings and the nearest tube station is Chancery Lane.
The main attraction is a presentation from company name adjudicator Judi Pike - famous for having the honour of deciding the first case before the Company Names Tribunal. For those who want to do some research on why Coke Cola Ltd has now become 0651 9140 Ltd, I have loaded the good bits of the file into our Google Group. We look forward to a highly interactive discussion.

However, the meeting will begin with a networking session at which you will be able to find out more about

• Westlaw IP - our representatives Shakira Ali has agreed to come


• Transglobal Payment Solutions Ian Wheeler will be on hand to explain the delights of paying and receiving foreign currency


• Manged and Virtual office services offered by Executive Offices who now run the old patent office building


• MARCO - IP management software

What's more the meeting is free to attend. Please email me to ensure you get a cup of tea. The meeting will adjourn to a local hostelry to continue the debate with a little help from our Transglobal Sponsor. Be there

Welcome to the New Wave of Solos

Anna Rabin, a real rather than intellectual property expert has written a great article for The Lawyer about her recent experiences of being thrown into the Solo world. She is a fast mover and has already hung up her shingle on the web. As with all Lawyer articles you can comment on her article and see what others have said. They get much better comments than we do but then they sometimes quote them in their print media which maybe acts as encouragement.

Career-enhancing?

I've just been asked by a bright young qualifying solicitor, bilingual in two major European languages and with a very good law degree from a leading university, if the College of Law's LLM in Professional Legal Practice is as truly career-enhancing as the course's website appears to portray it.

My own impression is that neither law firms nor clients are particularly impressed by any LLMs. This impression is based partly on the vast number of references I have penned for apparently good students who read specialist LLMs with an intellectual property or Information Technology bias, but who had little luck in terms of career advancement; it's also partly based on my observation that, on the whole, my former students who have done best are those with the best portfolio of personal skills (languages, literacy, diligence, ability to work with others) rather than those with the best paper qualifications. I have no familiarity with the College of Law LLM in Professional Legal Practice, though, and don't want to prejudge it.

Any comments? If so, can they be delivered with great expedition? The closing date for applications is this coming Monday ...

Fancy a drink?

Visiting US sole practitioner, attorney, IP enthusiast and visionary Cathy Gellis is visiting London at the moment. If you'd like to say hello to her, she'll be at The Old Nick this evening, Thursday 8 (oops 15 was a mistake sorry) January, from 5.00pm to 7.00pm. Just turn up and say hi: it's a small pub and you'll soon spot the American accent!

Proposal for a UK Solicitors-only IP Group

If you practice as a solicitor in England and have not been contacted by Shireen - get in touch.

Sadly regulation seems set to divide even SOLO IP practitioners. Creating a practising solicitor-only group allows you to concentrate on things like Investors in People and Lexcel accreditation that may bring down the cost of the dreaded professional indemnity insurance. Lexcel is run by the Law Society and accredits practice management. I agree that practice management is the key to managing risk but I don't agree that paying someone else to confirm that I manage my practice well is a good idea - especailly in these times when it is difficult to persuade clients to pay their bills. The process of accreditation usually requires the production of a lot of paperwork and manuals - the sort of thing that is needed to communicate across an organisation so for true SOLOs its a bit redundant.

One of the most important things for good practice managment is a good database and mine MARCO helps me enormously. Special 2009 deals are available for group members. OK thats an advert as my company aims to make a profit out of licensing the software - haven't got anywhere near it yet - but there's always hope. Meanwhile I would hate to see anyone exposing themselves to risk because they cannot afford practice management system.

Happy Holidays

Lessons of Intelmark

Flipping through the Financial Times How to Spend it supplement over lunch as every SOLO practitioner (who gets a free copy) does at this time of year gave rise to a discussion of whether under current law this stunning advert takes advantage of the 007 brand .

To half the office - those with good eyes - the small print legend Bahama Islands 10:07 >makes the link. The other half of the office says just nice advertising but interesting that even the big brands play with each other. Now we are loooking for educational comments please. But I must say Sean Connery washes up well. Of course it might be licensed use ...

Contribute to the training effort and have your say.

New name, new website, same old headache, speedier recovery?

The new Intellectual Property Office or IPO (formerly UK-IPO, formerly Patent Office) website has just gone live. It's divided between pages that are for the use of practitioners (the Professional bit) and those for the use of laymen and amateurs (the standard bit, or IP-lite if you prefer). You can switch between the two, using the little box at the top right hand corner of the active part of the web page. Once on the Profession pages, the Law & Practice, Forms & Fees and Online Services bits are easy to access. The IPO, to its credit, sought and received user input in the form of that cute little software that lets people sort cards corresponding to their frequency of use of different pages on the site.

There's always the headache of bookmarks being lost, but the IPO reckons that users will be redirected to the the 100 most heavily-used bookmarks, which should soften the blow.

Can I suggest that, through the Comments feature of this blog, we take note of the new site's good points and bad points? I had hoped that the page background of the Professional and standard pages would be in different colours, so that users could instantly see if they were in the right place for forms and fees or if they were about to be confronted with Novelty Norvello ...