BPLA Set to Vote (Dec. 7th) on Name Change to BOSTON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW ASSOCIATION
The annual meeting of the Boston Patent Law Association will be held on December 7th from 11:30 to 1PM at The State Room, 60 State Street, Boston. (register here). A key item on the agenda will be a vote to amend the By-Laws to change the name of the Association to the BOSTON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW ASSOCIATION. (Amendment here). If you cannot attend the meeting, you may vote by proxy via the form found at the first link above.
This name change is long overdue. I joined the BPLA nearly 50 years ago, and watched the enormous growth of the trademark and copyright community in Boston. I also witnessed the refusal to change the name of the organization because of "tradition." It's time to step into the 21st century, folks.
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Text Copyright John L. Welch 2022.
posted by John L. Welch @ 11/25/2022
2 comments
2 Comments:
Agree. Moreover, an organization that relies on “tradition” to keep a dated name that marginalizes a vibrant component of its membership appears to be promoting an old boy’s network. As a boomer woman in “not-patent IP” I entered the practice when it was dominated by patent lawyers. At that time, most of them were men. I joined the country’s oldest IP association in 1973, when it was called the Patent Law Association of Chicago. It has since re-named itself the Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago to reflect the practice areas of its members.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Property_Law_Association_of_Chicago. It kicked the “tradition” of nominal exclusion to the curb in favor of accuracy and inclusion. Many other IP organizations, founded when patent lawyers dominated the scene, have updated their names with no loss of membership or panache,
For perspective, note that we have had an Under Secretary of Intellectual Property since 2001. There is no Undersecretary of Patents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Secretary_of_Commerce_for_Intellectual_Property. When Andrei Iancu held that role, as Director of the US Patent and TRADEMARK Office, his presentations to Congress, and the legal and business communities, highlighted the equal stature of patents AND trademarks to our economy.
Obviously, copyright is also of such tremendous value that our $2 trillion entertainment and media content is among our nation’s most significant exports in evaluating the balance of trade.
I practice in California now, but I believe the IP organizations in every state and at the national and international level comprise a special community, and I trust I am not being presumptuous by sharing my views here.
The Boston association’s claim to “tradition” strikes me as similar to 2022 law office forgoing computers in favor of the tradition of pen and ink documents as in the law offices of Dickens’ tales. Sometime in the 1990s I attended a luncheon meeting in Washington DC of about a hundred members of the “American Patent Law Association.” Up for a vote at the meeting was a proposal to change the name to the “American Intellectual Property Law Association.” There was no discussion and no objection, so the chair called for a voice vote. There were no dissenters. It was a non-issue because everyone agreed that the terminology of the profession had changed.
Tom McCarthy
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