A woman's place ... is in the lead: thoughts on an upcoming IP Forum

What is the place of women in intellectual property leadership? News of the launch of Managing Intellectual Property magazine's International Women's Leadership Forum, which hits London on 24 February 2015, has given this Kat a serious opportunity to think about this from the perspective of a male who has been active in the field of intellectual property for 40 of the most challenging years the IP system and its users have ever faced.

Remember when the world of IP looked like this?

Going back to 1973, when this Kat commenced his doctoral research in intellectual property, it could fairly well be said that IP was a man's club. In the course of the empirical side of his research he interviewed well over 30 IP practitioners in-house and in private practice, as well as representatives of inventors and trade unions. Not one was a woman. Within the field as a whole, women were massively under-represented. Mary Vitoria QC -- who incidentally beat this Kat to the first lectureship he ever applied for -- and the legendary competition lawyer Professor Valentine Korah were very much trailblazers in a field in which speakers and registrants at conferences, seminars and lectures were preponderantly male and when women, if praised to their face, were all too often mocked behind their backs.  Where a woman achieved any degree of prominence it was usually stated to be because of her exceptional virtues -- or rumoured to be because of her complete lack of them.

Then things changed ...

Outside the UK, how did women fare in terms of IP leadership? Possibly a good deal better, in terms of their results.  Two major achievers in the eyes of this Kat were two people who did not so much lead thought as to provide a catalyst for serious thinking: he notes the quiet but effective manner in which Robin Rolfe, an administrator rather than an IP lawyer, worked to metamorphose the United States Trademark Association into the International Trademark Association, a.k.a. INTA, paving the way for her successors to grow the INTA into the hugely influential educational, training, policy-forming and lobbying body which it is today, and trade mark attorney Tove Graulund's root-and-branch transformation of European trade mark organisation MARQUES from a well-intentioned dining club into a highly-focused multinational fighting force.

Today the presence of women in positions of leadership in organisations such as INTA and MARQUES is routine and unchallenged.  The position is much the same for copyright too, where the influential role of women is again clearly apparent and names such as Rochelle C. Dreyfuss and Jane C. Ginsburg fly swiftly into the mind, along with a legion of European scholars and practitioners.  On the patent thought-leadership law side, this Kat feels that women have always been under-represented -- though two notable exceptions in his eyes are a heroine, Federal Circuit judge Pauline Newman and a villain in the scourge of the European pharma patent industry, Neelie Kroes.

Nicola the Katonomist

Returning to the MIP conference, this Kat very much hopes that it will do well for several reasons. First, he is delighted that registration is free not only for in-house intellectual property/ patent counsel and R&D professionals but also for his fellow academics, whom he hopes will attend in quantity.  Secondly, he is delighted to see the names of two rising stars on the programme: one is none other than Nicola Searle who, as this blog's resident Katonomist, was a hugely popular member of the IPKat team [you can check her Katposts out here] until she was lured away by the promise of a more respectable job as Economic Advisor to the UK Intellectual Property Office; the other is Rebecca Baines, now a partner with Rouse but, in a former existence, an outstanding trainee with a Magic Circle law firm in which this Kat held an IP consultancy.

Merpel is excited about this event, this being the first time it has crossed the Atlantic (the organisers' New York and California conferences on the same theme each pulled in over 200 registrants).  However, she can't help wondering what sort of reaction there would be if MIP decided to launch an International Men's Leadership Forum. Presumably the programme would be full of macho stuff like search and seizure, destruction of infringing goods, and break-out sessions on Dispute Provocation ...

Further details and registration can be gathered here.

Registration includes membership of the invitation-only Women in IP Global Network, which provides members with access to year-round networking and thought leadership events (you don't actually have to register for the conference to join the Network: just email registrations@managingip.com, quoting 'Women in IP Network -- IPKat). According to this Kat's friends at MIP, regular editorial coverage is also given such as interviews with senior women in IP and articles covering mentoring, development and webinars. There's also an online membership portal where registrants can connect with in-house counsel and other practitioners from around the world.