GeekLawyer’s Blog

Geeklawyer is probably unique in being a barrister who occasionally drafts patents (but he would be very interested to hear assertions to the contrary). He is aware of one US lawyer, now a UK solicitor, who also does so but only because she initially qualified as a US patent attorney. Geeklawyer will confess that he only does it for the money: he charges a monstrous and exhorbitant fee that is not even nearly merited. His clients believe that a patent drafted by a barrister is more likely to survive examination and possible judicial scrutiny than one drafted by a patent clerk. In his rush to pay the fees into his bank account Geeklawyer always forgets to tell the client that this is rubbish: patent clerks draft this rubbish day in day out and are often more fully up to speed on current topics affecting their part of this art than barristers, if truth be told. Nonetheless, Geeklawyer has the UK mead industry to support and inexpedient truth must be wrangled into subservience.

Geeklawyer has therefore got a vested interest in the growth of patents and extending scope of their availability. But in a rare moment of selflessness he’d say that while this may be good for himself, other lawyers and patent clerks it is something that would damage the interests of the software industry. Macrossan may well snivel about someone kicking their dog, but one only has to look at the chronic state of the US patent office to see the virulent sickness awaiting us if we french kiss the pro-software patent lobby. Geeklawyer knows this well; his clients pay him shitloads in the hope of carving out a market monopoly to frustrate competition or in fear of being cut out of the market themselves. Money all wasted and which would be much better spent on engineers quality control and testing. Take a look at Microsoft Vista. Sure it will be a piece of crap but this a company making 3000+ patent applications a year and spending God alone knows how much in doing so. All of that money would be much better spent on security testing of its products.

Macrossan hope to get their rejection appeal before the House of Lords. Third time unlucky Geeklawyer hopes, but it would be good for it to be heard since there needs to be the highest authority on what are rather important points.

On a picky side-note, snobbish Geeklawyer took umbrage at El Reg’s choice of language. In it they say: “Macrossan will be represented by patent lawyers at Marks & Clark“. ‘Lawyer‘ is, admittedly, an inexact term with no statutory meaning and it can in its most general sense mean someone who possesses detailed knowledge of a subject and the rights and obligations consequentially attaching. This term could therefore apply to patent clerks since they will advise on rights: equally it could apply to an enthusiastic street cleaner with a hobby interest in the law and who holds conference in the nearest pub (not a generally bad venue of course). It is however also defined as person authorised to practice law & so in its colloquial sense it would be taken to mean, in the UK, a solicitor or barrister; that is, a professional with a practice certificate and rights of audience before any court. A patent clerk is not in the generally accepted sense a lawyer but merely a paralegal, however skilled, and no more a lawyer than is a conveyancing clerk or a costs or wills draftsman.
Of course when they are picking up chicks at parties they will want to big themselves up - fair enough but Geeklawyer spent a fortune in time and money qualifying as a barrister and lawyer; he does not want his profession, or his profession’s reputation, sullied and diluted by the incorporation of lesser individuals. Yes, I am proud to be a snob.