World IP Day - spreading the word ...

I spent yesterday doing my bit for IP education - talking to entrepreneurs, inventors, small business people and the like about the subject, and also plugging my book - though that's not a natural constituency for it, really. (Here's a picture of me in action, though I don't really look like that at all, do I?) I do hope that Leeds Central Library will consider it a worthwhile investment - and other designated patent libraries, too.

Also doing her bit - with much more style than me - for IP education is Hope London, which I'm afraid I thought at first must be a charity for down and outs in the capital. She's an artist who has chosen to use her talents to promote the message that intellectual property, and of course copyright in particular, is important for graphic artists. This article about her appeared in The Scotsman, because she's based in Wigtown, where you can see her works as part of a festival called Spring Fling. Her mission is, using the medium of a graphic novel, to get the IP message in a across painless and amusing way (my mission in the Dictionary of Intellectual Property Law, too, though the medium is rather different and I didn't exercise my cartoon-drawing skills, such as they are, which have lain dormant since my contributions to the Warwick Boar in 1977) - a very promising idea, as you'll see if you follow that last link - though being a boring, literal minded, male, English lawyer the American usage of "Esq" does grate on me ... However, it's a universal message so I won't go on about it. I'll just wish her luck and hope to see more of her work in the future - Wigtown is not, unfortunately, on my itinerary in the near future. Leeds and Bradford yesterday was enough for now.