Chillin'Competition

(Warning: this is a fairly uninteresting post with no legal content whatsoever, so feel free to skip it. The reason why I’m posting it comes at the last paragraph)

I’d anticipated another post on reverse payments today, but it will have to wait until Monday. With only one week to go before the holidays I’m swamped at work and accumulating significant delays on a bunch of non-work stuff (several articles, book reviews, paper grading, etc.) which, for some reason, I had committed to do before the holidays.

It makes you reflect. This is one of the peculiar features of private practice; you try to do your best in work-related matters and you end up doing all other stuff hastily and sometimes badly. It’s never bothered me that much, but it probably bothers others (the ones you pay less attention to, or the ones that suffer your delays). I don’t know to what extent this is inherent to the profession or to my irrational tendency to embark in all sorts of projects (or most likely both), but it clearly is an area in need of improvement, at least in my case. Tips welcome!

I won’t bore you with details on what keeps me busy and what I’m being unable to do (it actually was my initial plan, but I then I realized that with a too personal post I’d risk ending up appearing as another whining-while-at-the-same-time-bragging lawyer). Actually, even this actual post may be enough to convey that impression, but that’s not the intention. Anyway, let me give you an example of me doing non-work things at the last minute badly and how I resorted to Nico to fix it.

I spent this whole week travelling because of work (right now ,Friday at 16.20, I’m writing from the Court’s library in Luxembourg; by the way, the food was worse today…) and had to lecture yesterday at ERA (Academy of European Law) on the interface between Intellectual Property Article 101. It’s always a challenge to explain the Technology Transfer BER in a way that doesn’t induce people to suicide, but I think I succeeded: only two people tried, one by jumping out of the window, the other by attempting to read the actual guidelines on technology transfer (despite my warnings) 😉

As usual, preparations were done at the last minute. The problem, however, is that I was asked to deliver a fairly detailed ppt in advance (smart trick to force speakers to prepare in advance..). And that was a bit of challenge; so I resorted to Nico.

He has an excellent and incredibly detailed power point presentation on IP and competition law (I hate using power point, and not only because of its lack of interop with 3rd party applications… yes, cheap pun, but I couldn’t avoid it..) so I basically copy-pasted it in a Garrigues template ppt and used it (actually, I didn’t even do the copy-pasting myself; I’ve to thank Rocío de Troya for that).

It ended up being a good idea, as I explained to the students, my use of Nico’s materials was useful to illustrate several concepts that are very relevant to IP law, such as a copyright infringement, free-riding and follow-on innovation (btw, the term “based” that you see in the slide above -the 2nd in my (his) presentation was actually a euphemism).

You most likely don’t give a damn about this story, but put yourself in my shoes: I had to (i) thank Nico and acknowledge his authorship of the materials; (ii) write something quick and light for a summer Friday afternoon; and (iii) minimally and superficially  reflect on the absorbent (for good and for bad) aspects of the profession.. Have a good weekend!