A good read?

The sign of a good partner is that he or she never wastes the opportunity to make a sales pitch. But a couple of weeks ago I was caught off-balance at a City University dinner at Mansion House when, among the stirrup cups, Stephen Kinsella, boss of Sidley Austin’s Brussels office, reached into his dinner jacket and whipped out a sharp-looking book promo postcard for If Only You Knew.

“It’s by my wife, Alice Jolly — she’s a very talented novelist,” he explained pointing to a recommendation by Barbara Trapido that ran: “She’s so good on clothes, sex, love, death and the prisons that family members can make for each other.”

I hesitated to ask whether this was all autobiographical. But who cares? With plaudits like that, the Kinsellas can expect a bestsella.

Mind the gap

I have given up trying to understand TV ads although I can still just about manage those giant posters on Tube stations. But not always.

“The trouble with resisting temptation is that it may never come your way again,” runs the legend accompanying the cartoon of a rhino weighing up the pros and cons of butting a zookeeper up the backside. It’s on the Bakerloo north platform at Waterloo and I was mildly amused by the adolescent fun. What foxed me though was why Pinsent Mason has chosen this particular image to promote its legal skills. The small print says something blah-blah about “Can Do catalysts” and “Entrepreneurial spirit” but it all got garbled in the flurry of the next arriving train. I was tempted to remain on the platform to decipher it but I reckoned that I had better step aboard because, after all, that train may never come my way again.

Any offers?

The United Kingdom Patent Office yesterday changed its name to United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office and apparently it now wants to be known as the UK-IPO.

Doing what it does I guess its first move should have been to file the name as a trademark. However, it seems that that step was overlooked. Instead, Joshi & Welch LLP, a public-spirited firm of specialist trademark attorneys, filed it so as “to forestall someone else from holding the Government to ransom over the name”. It has now offered the name back to the Patent Office free of charge — accompanied, it must be said, by some snide comments to the effect that the Patent Office had rather fallen down on the job and “should have sought advice from professionals experienced in this area when going through a major change such as this”.

For myself, I thought that it was seeming to put the UK up for an “initial public offer” which was the bigger scandal. But no doubt there would be more than one Russian oligarch keen to make an offer.

The firm with no names

I try to keep up to date with who is who in the press offices of City law firms but, I admit, sometimes there are gaps. I’d not had contact with Clyde & Co for ages so asked to be put through to its press office. “Do you have a name there?” the receptionist asked. “Er, no. That’s why I’m inquiring.” “Well, I can’t put you through. We have a nonames policy. If you can’t give me a name, I can’t put you through.” “But it’s for the PRESS OFFICE.” “No, I’m not putting you through.” Good job I wasn’t a client.

edward.fennell@yahoo.co.uk

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