"It is interesting to note that ..." there is a bee in the editorial bonnet

In my capacity as Editor of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice I receive a good deal of correspondence from contributors on issues of style as well as substance. While questions of substance are usually raised before an article is submitted, those of style generally follow the event.

One point that greatly concerns me is the padding of text through the addition of redundant phraseology, repetition, grandiose phraseology and stretching the word count by expressing in the passive mood that which is more succinctly said in the active.  Readers may be unaware -- though authors may be painfully conscious -- that some submissions are as much as 30% shorter on publication than at their submission date.

For the guidance of JIPLP authors I reproduce the following exchange between a valued contributor to the journal and the Editor.  The contributor wrote:

"At line [...] there was some text deleted from my original submission which, I think, needs to be restored. I had started the sentence by saying, “It is interesting to note that”, because I wanted the reader to know that I was subtly moving to a new – but related – point. Perhaps the phrase “It is interesting to note that” or, even better, “It is noteworthy that” could be restored?"

He received the following response:

"I appreciate your concern – and your subtlety – but I’m afraid you have to contend with the deep-seated prejudice of a cantankerous old editor.

The words “It is interesting to note that” are to all intents and purposes banned from JIPLP since they generally add nothing but length. If the text which follows those words is interesting, they are redundant; if it is not interesting, it shouldn’t be there in the first place. And if your reader is reading what you’ve written, he’s going to note it whether you tell him that it is interesting to do so or not.

I’ve edited these words out of most of the Current Intelligence items and articles that I’ve edited since 2005. I’ve pulled them out of paragraphs and rooted them out of footnotes. And I’ve only just begun … 

If – as you say -- you’re moving to a new but related point, I’ve a great suggestion. How about “On a new but related point, .. ”".

You have been warned!

Some tips for better style

Editing articles and Current Intelligence notes from authors around the world, I am exposed to all manner of literary devices and techniques. Some enhance the reader's understanding and enjoyment of the written word. Others do not. This post seizes the opportunity to mention some recent phenomena which authors are politely invited to avoid:

• Folly with footnotes: in common with most other reputable and readable journals, JIPLP uses only one level of footnotes. In the past month I have encountered an article blessed with two sets of footnotes, one in numerical order and referring to materials at the foot of each page, the other (strictly speaking, a set of end notes) in alphabetical order and referring the reader to materials which followed the article's concluding paragraph.  I have also today met my first footnoted footnote -- probably the ill-begotten offspring resulting from the union of inaccurate copy-and-pasting and careless proof-reading.  Please supply just one set of footnotes, referring to material at the foot of the page.
  
  
• Badinage with brackets (or playing with parentheses): some contributors deploy these devices so subtly that they convey a degree of meaning that editors and readers may easily miss.  What is the shade of difference between "a likely award of damages" and "a (likely) award of damages", for instance? Or "the putative defendant" and "the (putative) defendant"?  Some other authors use consecutive brackets which, with no unbracketed text between them, look a little like a line of textual railway carriages chugging their way across the page.  Two consecutive pieces of bracketed text are aesthetically unappealing even if intelligible and should not be used.
  
  
• Dissection with dashes: properly used, a dash can create an admirably dramatic effect. However, like many dramatic gestures, the dash loses its power almost in proportion to the extent to which it is employed. To put it another way, " However—like many dramatic gestures—the dash loses its power— almost—in proportion to the extent to which it is employed".  Loss of power through excessive use is not confined to the dash, though. Exclamation marks are similarly afflicted. 

Art, Style, Design: a thought-leader

Professor Mario Franzosi is a founder-member of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice Editorial Board and a well-known thought-leader in both international and European intellectual property circles. A leading advocate of the need for fresh and functionally useful thinking in the field of design protection, he is the author of "Design protection Italian style", Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (2006) 1 (9): 599-602..

The following piece marks Mario's appointment as the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI) rapporteur for Design.  JIPLP hopes that, apart from serving as a clarion call for the reform of design protection law, it will generate the submission of articles to the journal on that subject.

Art, style, design

1.     The AIPPI logo

The occasion for this article stems from my appointment as rapporteur for AIPPI for the Question: Design. At first, I considered the AIPPI logo, to see whether it is visual (or graphic) design (right). To me, it is clear what the logo expresses. To the left you see a school of fish, which confidently enter a trap in the centre. However, the trap is broken, so that fish exit to the right. There is nothing wrong, however, since the fish are inedible. The acronym AIPPI (which is in French) clearly summarizes the idea: Association Internationale de Pecheurs de Poissons Inutiles, in English: International Association of Inedible Fish.

I do not believe this logo is a work of design. In addition, it is somehow deceptive: a trap for fish. AIPPI should or must change it. 

2.     Art, style, design

So we have to consider the protection of design in the world. I have to say at the outset that the various laws of the various countries are very, very different. What is design in country A is not design in B; what is protectable in one country is not in another. But it is worse than that. It is not infrequent that, in the same country, in case of litigation the first instance court reaches conclusions utterly different from the higher court. Of course, this event is not infrequent in other areas, but what is peculiar here is the confidence in which the lower court says something (like: this design is extraordinary and clearly deserves protection) and the higher court says, with the same or greater confidence, just the opposite (this is a ridiculous and stupid design). There are no grey areas: what is absolutely white for somebody is absolutely black for others. How is it possible? The judges adopt a lay concept of design, and apparently there are first grade and second grade laymen.

I believe the starting point should be to try to understand what is design in the real world, before the law comes into consideration. To this aim, a distinction should be made between Art, Style and Design.  

2.1.Art results from the work of artists, those people who, with constant and enduring passion, communicate in understandable form their feelings and thoughts -- feelings and thoughts that are universal: those of the human race. 

Art expresses those permanent ideas like Beauty, Love, Courage, Misery, Heroism, Passion, Faith, which are everlasting principles and sentiments. The message is not immediately evident; especially for modern art, it has to be detected or interpreted; when detected, it makes an everlasting impression. 

Works of Art are in Museums, and also in the lobbies of the most prestigious law firms. Some months ago I was in the office of a well-known, high-profile IP lawyer and I saw in the lobby a most catching picture. In this picture I clearly recognized that lawyer (looking, perhaps, a little younger than his actual years), working tirelessly for a case. The picture expressed clearly the intelligence, dedication, tension and ability of the professional. It seemed that this IP star was considering only the interest of his client, and nothing leaked from the external world. I expressed my admiration to the secretary. And she said (I told you that the meaning of the work of art is not immediately evident !): “Yes, Sir, true. However, it is a fact that the painting depicts a lobster, cooked with onions and potatoes”. I will not tell whether it was lobster or potato or onion that brought me to the identification with our famous friend. 

2.2. Style is typical of stylists, those people who express their style, their personality  in their creations.  A work of style is recognizable and easily attributed to the stylist. It is the signature of the creator, like a real signature made with a pen (stylus, in Latin). It must show the personality of the creator; if not, it is a creation with no style. And the style has to be consistent: if Armani changes style and designs in the style of Dolce & Gabbana, the public will say that he has lost style, and deserves no consideration and appreciation. The same if Dolce & Gabbana designs in the Armani’s style: nobody would accept it. An exchange of image is not allowed, since it would be a loss or style, no matter whether the new style is good or bad. 

2.3. Design is quite a different animal. Designers design common objects, those kind of items that you use every day, in a manner that it is (or should be) appropriate for you and the object. They design common coffee-pots, or typing machines or refrigerators, which make good coffee, keep your food fresh, type letters easily. The personality of designers does not count; it is the utility and elegance of the object that matters. When in a shop window you see a coffee-pot that is a work of design, you look at it with interest, enter the shop and buy it (even if it costs a little more than expected, but not so terribly more), because you have a feeling that it is nice and makes a good coffee. You put the old coffee-pot aside, and think of using the old only if the new breaks out. But the new does not break, if it is good design, so that the old remains disconsolate on the shelf, until it goes, even more disconsolate, in the basement. 

A work of design is a work of a designer, working with other functions in the company. If the company could buy aluminum at a bargain, the coffeepot is made of aluminum; if not, is made of iron. If the company wants to make use of a number of filters that lay in the warehouse and nobody finds a proper use, the coffeepot employs said filters. The product is made with what is easily available, provided is appropriate (fit and match, if I may use the European terminology). The product is proper, but not fanciful; the public does not know, and does not recognize, the designer. The public buys coffeepots, and not names. 

Of course there are contact, or conflicts, between Art, Style and Design. For instance, if you enter a museum of fine art and see a beautiful chair, you may not know if it is a work of Art or Design. But there are ways to find out. For instance, if you sit on the chair and you feel comfortable, it is a work of Design. If you sit and the alarm sounds, the guardian comes with a broom and scolds you, it is a work of Art. The amount of scolding is the amount of creativity. 

3.     Do we have good laws for design? 

Now, what is the legal protection given to design by the various laws? The answer is easy, albeit disappointing. 

It is not at all clear what the laws protect, under the purported label of design. It is clear instead, at least to me, that the laws contain highly generic formulations which at best signify nothing, and at worse are a source of confusion. See for instance the definition of design in the European (or Community) Design Regulation. It says that 

"design" means the appearance of the whole or a part of a product resulting from the features of, in particular, the lines, contours, colours, shape, texture and/or materials of the product itself and/or its ornamentation.” 

This is not an exceptionally brilliant definition. And the law specifies that 

“A design shall be protected by a Community design to the extent that it is new and has individual character”. 

The element of novelty is relatively clear (or at least I do not want to confuse the innocent reader at this point). The most important and problematic element is the individual character: 

“A design shall be considered to have individual character if the overall impression it produces on the informed user differs from the overall impression produced on such a user by any design which has been made available to the public…” 

before the date of the design or the priority. 

If you apply the law for what it says, you end up protecting a coffee-pot in the shape of a shoe-brush, or a shoe-brush in the shape of a coffee-pot.  You would protect a mouse trap in the shape of the statue of the finance minister, and the statue of the finance minister in the shape of mouse trap.[1] This is somehow an exaggeration, but not so much. The register of the European Design Office (OHIM) is full of useless and sometimes ridiculous designs. Worse, it is full of unnecessary monopolies which add nothing to human knowledge, art, progress.

This situation is not at all unique for Europe. I have a feeling (better, I have to say) that the situation is no better in other countries. But I feel at ease to criticize my system, and hesitate to criticize the systems of others who have not requested my opinion, and that could not care less. 

Is this the law (are these the laws) we have? Yes. 

Is this the law we need? No. 

There are two categories of persons who would be happy with this law. One is the class of patent attorneys who file design applications. The other is the class of litigators who profit from it. Personally, I feel discomfort, even if I belong to one class or both. Double discomfort, therefore. 

I do not think it should be the spirit and mission of the law to create useless  monopolies. And every monopoly whose boundaries are uncertain is either useless or dangerous. And see what kind of monopoly! 

While for a patent for inventions an inventive level is necessary, a small difference is sufficient for designs. It is enough that the product is not common-or-garden. And if this condition is fulfilled, the law grants a monopoly for 10 or 20 or 25 years. 

One could say that this is not the first time that the laws have provided monopolies for realizations which are not creations, and one could add that there is nothing wrong with it. For instance, a trade mark does not require ingenuity in order to be protected. And a copyright exists also on creations of low level. All these are monopolies, and this is not a problem. But the argument does not fly for design. Design is a different animal. It consists of the form of an object, and the availability of forms is not unlimited. In some cases, the forms are few. In all cases (repeat, ALL), the forms are limited, and normally much less (I would say, incommensurably less) that the operators of a specific product. The available shapes for coffee-pots are much less than the producers. And monopolies for common shapes, or immaterial variations, are bad. They are an obvious and unnecessary obstacle to free activity, an obstacle that can only be removed with pain and effort. 

Let me mention a personal experience. Some time ago I received a client who makes a common product, which I will call a mouse-trap. It was a mouse-trap not too different from a conventional mouse trap, those that you know and that all mice find so attractive.[2] The client had received a warning letter from an entity which had obtained a Community design registration, and asked for a cease-and-desist undertaking, or a not so terrible compensation for allowing my client to continue commercialization. To me, even if this is not (I have to confess) my primary qualification, the mouse-trap looked almost conventional. But I decided to make a search, and found that Entity Inc had obtained about 350 similar registration for mouse-traps. The result was that all the field was covered: all mouse-traps in Europe infringe Entity's registrationsy. Of course, my client could litigate and win the case, but the cost of litigation would have been much higher that the cost of settlement. So the client decided to pay. You can multiply this case by 350 (in reality, much more) and see the purpose and social function of the Community Design System, or at least how it could be used. Beware, you innocent reader, that intend to sell mouse-traps, even if common-or-garden or immaterial variations !

[1] Incidentally, a shape with is somehow descriptive of the situation, when you consider that you have to pay taxes.
[2] Incidentally, the validity of an European design has to be assessed with the eyes of the informed user. The  informed user for a mouse-trap is (according to the definition of the prevailing jurisprudence) the average mouse, well informed and attentive.

Contributors, please note!

After another heavy bout of editing, I've compiled a few more pointers for contributors who wish to stay in my favour.

1. UK Court of Appeal. Like the hippogriff this is a legendary hybrid of concepts which should be reserved for use in works of fiction. The United Kingdom exists and so does the Court of Appeal -- but there are separate Courts of Appeal for England and Wales and for Northern Ireland. Scotland -- which has not yet been granted independence from the UK -- has a stand-alone legal system with an appellate court which is not called the Court of Appeal. There are plenty of variants upon this vice: to mention one, the UK doesn't have a High Court either.

2. "In a sense". These words, formerly beloved by academics alone, have now been adopted by many practitioners too. They are usually deployed at the beginning of a sentence and generally add nothing to its meaning. Thus, instead of "The application to cancel the registration was bound to fail" one reads "In a sense, the application to cancel the registration was bound to fail", no explanation being forthcoming as to what the sense is. The normal consequence is deletion.

3. "... of all". When delivering a lecture, the expression "First of all" adds emphasis and gives the listener a moment longer in which to absorb the speaker's meaning. On the printed page, "... of all" is padding. It's not as if one often encounters within legal writing the concepts of "First of some" or "First of third". The word "first", when used without qualification, implies the "of all" element. A similar malaise affects the expression of percentages. Thus one reads: "Only 16% of all patents are renewed into their 20th year". The concept of percentage also implies the words "of all", which can safely be omitted by the writer or eliminated by the editor.

4. Acute Parenthetic Syndrome. This condition is manifested by pro references to, for example, " Eli Lilly and Company Limited ("Eli Lilly")", where any reader will instantly recognise, without further guidance from the author, that references to Eli Lilly are references to the company of that name and not to its eponymous founder who died nearly 112 years ago. Likewise ("the Act"), ("the Directive"), ("the Court"), where the average reader would have no problem guessing which Act, Directive or Court is referred to since the author only mentions one.

5. Grindingly painful full-text repetition. In any article on acquisition of IP rights through a registration process, the word "application" is likely to get a few mentions. Where the author is discussing a decision involving the registration of a trade mark, there is nothing wrong with referring to an "application for registration". However, where the piece in question mentions no other form of application, it becomes tedious to read repeatedly the words "application for registration". If however it is important to distinguish the application for registration from a subsequent application for cancellation, or for applications for university admission, dog licences or permission to excavate ancient ruins or dog licences, the full form may -- if no alternative is available -- be used.

6. Footnote-notes. Notes at the foot of the page are called footnotes. The 'foot' bit refers to their location; the 'note' bit describes their function, which is to enable the reader to note something. There is nothing to be gained by commencing a footnote with the words "It should be noted that ...", which can be painlessly deleted without loss of value on the part of the reader.

7. Gender issues. The uncertainty on the part of many authors as to how to tackle gender is matched only by the uncertainty on the part of many publishers and editors as to how to deal with the author's preferred solution. The best and safest course of action for authors to take is to ask, before writing, whether the publisher has a preferred style and, if so, what it is. However, in getting on for 30 years in editorial work, I have never been asked these questions. The uncertainty of authors is plain to see and it runs wider than issues of political correctness. Thus an incorporated plaintiff can oscillate between "he", "it" and even "they"; the possessive pronoun

corresponds accordingly as "his", "its" and "their". "He/she", "s/he", "(s)he" and "he or she" abound. I even had a continental author who referred constantly to a claimant company as "she". When challenged, he pleaded linguistic ignorance, though I found it strange that an author whose English reading skills enabled him to read and discuss court judgments of some complexity, he had never noticed that companies are not normally referred to as "she".

8. The Author Knows Best. If eBay chooses perversely to spell its name with an initial lower case "e" and a capital "B", the author has no locus standi to correct it to Ebay. Likewise, the acute accent on the "e" of L'Oréal is not an optional extra, to be added or omitted at the whim of the author, any more than is the redundant "n" with which both Lord Hoffmann and Hoffmann-La Roche conclude their H-names. When a piece is submitted for publication, it is a courtesy to editor and future reader alike for the author to present the name in the manner in which it is correctly designated by its owner and, incidentally, in the manner in which an online search, using that name as a search term, will produce the correct search results (many search tools, including those provided for data on the websites of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and the Court of Justice of the European Union, being sensitive to diacritical signs).

9. Word creep. The tendency to add words is a familiar malaise. Thus "infringe" has in US circles become "infringe on", the short form of "infringe upon"; "until" is growing into "up until". Is this a cultural throwback to the days when we lawyers were paid by the word? Other examples: "when" grows into "at a time when"; "where" is often shunned for the increasingly popular "in circumstances where", "prior to" and "pursuant to" are heavily-used substitutes for terms like "before" and "under", while "a number of" has nearly exterminated"numerous". Word creep blends gently into tautology too: thus the "result" is not as impressive as the "end result".

Is there really more to say? Five more tips for IP writers

Following the critical attention given to two earlier posts on the topic (here and here), I'm offering a further set of five tips for authors of articles, notes and book reviews on intellectual property law and practice.

1. Salamanders and axolotls. In the animal kingdom, the salamander occupies an unusual position: it is capable of reproducing both in its mature form, as a handsome beast, and in its immature form, as a somewhat charmless axolotl. We intuitively favour the former over the latter. So too with words, we favour the longer and more apparently mature form of words over their shorter, less impressive brethren. Thus 'transportation' is often used when 'transport' will do nicely; 'simplistic' is chosen over 'simple', and so on. The cautious writer will do two things: he will consult a dictionary and check that the long and the short words are synonyms conveying the same shade of meaning (which in some cases they are not), and he will ask whether it is not an act of kindness to his reader to select the shorter where possible.

2. False friends. Some words are so similar to one another that they surely must mean the same thing -- but they don't. Not just IP editors but others are familiar with the apparently random selection of 'credit', 'credibility, 'credence', 'credulence', credulity' and 'credulousness' on the assumption that each will neatly fill a gap in a sentence without the need to repeat an earlier-used (and very possibly correct) term.

3. Pompous legalese. Words frequently deleted from texts published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, and from all good IP journals, are ugly portmanteau terms such as 'aforementioned', 'aforesaid' and 'hereinbefore'. They may provide valuable guidance in licence agreements (though they can generally be avoided), but are out of place. Where you find them in contemporary legal writing, they are frequently a sign of (i) authorial pomposity, (ii) a student author trying to sound grown-up or (ii) inattentive editing.

A second form of legalese involves the irritating word "said", as in "the said trade mark" or "said plaintiff". Sometimes no trade mark or plaintiff has been "said" and the reader wonders if he has missed something. When I speak to contributors who pepper their offerings with "said", or correspond with them by email, they express themselves quite lucidly without the need to resort to "said", so I encourage them to do the same in their journal submissions.

A third form of legalese is a sort of pseudo-American atrophy which is achieved by dispensing with the definite article. American lawyers often use "Plaintiff", "Defendant" and similar terms without resort to what non-Americans may feel to be the common courtesy of a preceding "the"; that does not permit authors to reduce their word count by omitting this small but ubiquitous word where it seems to them to make their text sound more American.

4. Monsterlinks. The author is duty-bound to cite his internet-located sources and the reader expects to find them. The publisher's task is to find an effective, and ideally attractive, means of representing them on paper if he cannot publish electronically and conceal them within a hyperlink. Most readers struggle to type domain names accurately into their internet browsers when they consist of some 70 or 80 characters (which, in footnotes, often contain numerous microscopic punctuation symbols); above that figure, the reader may lose hope entirely. Where a link is made to an official database containing statutes, treaties, case law or office decisions, that database will generally be internally searchable and the reader may reasonably be expected to navigate it himself. The author should bear this possibility in mind before submitting his text.

5. Who is Sarah Palin? For some personalities of the past, fame is persistent and may be presumed. No writer, when making an allusion, need break off from his narrative to explain who Napoleon, King Midas or Cleopatra might be. Similarly, the comprehension of adjectives derived from genuine celebrities can be assumed (depending on the audience addressed): Aristotelian, Socratic, Faustian are good examples. The same cannot be said of many lesser celebrities for whom even iconic status may be temporary. In 2008-9 much was heard of Sarah Palin, but will a reader recognise her name or understand an allusion to it if they read in 2029 an article penned in 2009? The principle is clear: choose your cultural reference points carefully. This principle works in space as well as time: a person who is famous in one country may well be quite unknown elsewhere, as many a tourist can verify when coming across statutes and memorials respectfully erected to heroes of whom they have never heard.

Ten more tips for IP writers

Following the interest stirred up by last week's post, "Ten helpful hints for IP writers", I've decided to add some more. Do let me know what you think about them.

1. Don't be passive, get active. "It was held by the court ..." sounds very grand, but "The court held ..." means the same thing and uses half as many words. Readers might be surprised to know how many contributors who cavil at what they consider an ungenerous allocation of words for an article will happily squander this allocation on sentences which are so full of passive verbs that they seem to run backwards.

2. Avoid confusing terminology. A major problem arises here when deciding how to refer to litigants in proceedings before the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market: the party filing an application to register a Community trade mark is rightly described as the applicant. If the application is successful, a party who challenges the registration before the Cancellation Division becomes the applicant for cancellation. If the application for cancellation succeeds and the trade mark owner seeks to challenge the decision of the Cancellation Division, he becomes the applicant for annulment before the Board of Appeal. If that application succeeds and is challenged before the General Court, the original applicant for cancellation becomes the applicant for annulment of the decision of the Board of Appeal.

An intelligent and observant reader may have no trouble following which party is which, even where each is described in turn as an "applicant" -- but it's simpler, where (for example) the first party is called Smith and the second is called Jones, to refer to them as Smith and Jones.

3. Be consistent, even if you're wrong. Some authors can't be sure whether to describe a work as "copyright" or "copyrighted", or whether to spell "trademark" as "trade mark" -- so they treat the reader to a smattering of each. If you stick to one formulation, the task of the editor is simpler since he knows what to look for. But don't think that all the editor needs to do is to select his "change all" feature and correct each unaccepted spelling: this has the unfortunate effect of additionally changing the correct spellings in the titles of books, articles and chunks of quoted text.

4. 'It' and 'This'. Very common words in the English language, 'this' and 'it' are loyal servants of the writer's meaning when properly deployed. However, when used at the beginning of a sentence, they can have the effect of throwing the reader back to the previous sentence, or sometimes the previous paragraph, to establish precisely what the 'This' or 'It refers to. The writer will always know, but the reader may not.

5. Sympathy. It is a rare author indeed whose interest in intellectual property law is so pure and detached that it enables him or her to analyse issues entirely dispassionately. We all intuitively side with the owner or the user, the retailer or the consumer, the proprietary drug company or its generic competitor, as we are bound to recognise if we are honest.

Before writing, however, the author should ask whether it is necessary for the reader to be made aware of the writer's sympathies. Will it enhance the reader's appreciation of the problem, or of a court's solution to it? Many writers subconsciously drop words such as "(un)fortunately" into their prose, thus giving the flavour of partiality to their dissection of a legal issue. Others opt for more emotive terms which indicate their preference ("pirate", "troll", "rapacious", "greedy", "purely innocent", "monopolist"). I would not say that personal sympathy has no part to play at all, but rather that (i) the writer should be aware of the extent to which he may be displaying it and (ii) it may be more honest to declare one's interest at the outset than to drip-feed it to one's readership.

6. Look front and back. When buying a new car, you can be sure that if the front is a Toyota, the back's a Toyota too. The same can't be said when receiving a new article. The front bit states the author's aims and the back bit should reflect them. However, sometimes a substantial period may elapse between an author commencing the write-up and later finishing it; much may have happened during that period too -- a new legislative proposition, an unexpected legal decision or a decisive technological development. Any of these events may have caused the author to shift the perspective of the article in the course of writing it.

The reader, if he starts reading at the end of an article, should be able to gather from the author's concluding comments what it was that the author set out to establish initially. If that can't be done, there is a mismatch between front and back. In such a case the author should either rewrite his statement of objectives so as to describe his target as that which he has indeed hit (this is usually the easier path) or should revise the end to match the beginning.

7. Mind how you cut and paste. Most of us take the facility of cut-and-paste for granted now, having forgotten the inconvenient aura of textual paralysis imposed upon our writings by the manual typewriter. It is not always appreciated that cut-and-paste, particularly when done at speed, is an art. When the editor reads "On the other hand" followed, some lines later, by "One the one hand", when he is puzzled by a footnote to a work which is described as "cited above" but which isn't, and when he finds an organisation referred to by its initials or acronym on the third or fourth occasion on which it is mentioned, indelicate speed-pasting is often the most plausible explanation.

8. Two authors, one voice. Where a piece is genuinely co-authored, rather than penned by the trainee whose name appears alongside that of the partner at whose bequest the work was written, someone should read through and see if the text, rather than the content, gives away the point at which one author has taken over from another. This spares the editor from wondering whether to employ the second person or the third (eg from "You should check the termination provisions before entering the licence" to "One must guard against inadequate descriptions of licensed know-how"), whether to favour the past over the present tense when the article oscillates between the two, what to about inconsistent uses of gender and how to refer to a piece of legislation which veers at random between "Copyright, Designs and Patents Act" and CDPA. Much of the enjoyment of the pantomime horse is derived from contrast between its apparent existence as a single entity and the reality that its activities result from two distinct and separate contributions. Neither JIPLP nor its fellow IP journals are in the business of backing pantomime horses.

9. Reading is harder than writing. That is why many writers, having completed their texts, immediately submit them for publication. Many contributors would be rewarded if they read their text through at least once before attaching it to the email and pressing 'send'. They will find many gems. Sentences which begin in the singular and end in the plural, sentences with no verb at all, bold statements that diminish into meek "perhapses" by the time they reach their end, clauses from which the crucial word "not" has been omitted, the occasional "public" shamelessly parading as "pubic" -- and even the mis-spelling of either their own name or of that of their affiliation. Many of these errors will not be revealed by a spell-check, since the substitution of one correctly spelled word by another, or the omission of a necessary negative, remain within the province of the vigilant human.

10. Break every one of these rules with a good conscience if, in doing so, you enhance the ability of the reader to understand and appreciate the point which you seek to communicate.

Ten helpful hints for IP writers

Having spent most of yesterday editing submissions that have been accepted for publication in forthcoming issues, I found myself making notes concerning some of the most frequent -- if not the most serious -- "crimes" committed by their writers. To encourage future authors of articles, current intelligence notes and book reviews not to follow their example, I have taken the liberty of listing ten of these points below.

1. "What's in a Name?" is the most cliched of titles for contributions relating to trade marks, trade names, company names, geographical indications and domain name disputes. If I never changed the titles, JIPLP would probably publish between 10 and 12 "What's in a Name?" features a year.

2. Mammoth titles. While a grand title may impress the typesetters, it is unlikely to do so with readers. I frequently receive submissions with titles that exceed 20 words. These are difficult to remember and more likely to be incorrectly cited in other people's footnotes.

3. "Obvious" and "of course". The more frequently these words are used, the more they are likely to annoy the reader. Sometimes they are used as an appeal to self-evident truth on the part of a writer who cannot be bothered to explain or justify a proposition. Further, a reader to whom the writer's points are not obvious may feel patronised and/or alienated.

4. Metaphors. Carefully deployed, a metaphor can be devastatingly effective. However, many colourful figures of speech do not translate well from one culture to another. Many readers of JIPLP employ English as a second or subsequent language and will construe an unfamiliar metaphor literally unless they are made aware of its intended meaning. Misunderstood military and sports metaphors can detract from the force of a piece of otherwise clearly-expressed reasoning (if a litigant "nails his colours to the mast", or if counsel "bowls the witness a googly", will the reader know what is meant?).

5. Footnotes are printed in smaller lettering than the principal text. This is because they provide source references and other data that will assist the curious reader to learn more but will not distract other readers from what it is that the author seeks to say. If you use footnotes as a means of continuing at the bottom of the page a piece of reasoning that starts in the main text, you do your reader a disservice.

6. "Introduction" and "Conclusion". The observant reader will have noticed that is highly unusual for any article in JIPLP to commence with a heading marked "Introduction" or to conclude with the heading "Conclusion". These terms are not incorrect when used as such, but their cumulative effect is boringly descriptive. In the physical world, we would not gain in understanding if every door we saw was marked with the word "Door"; however, were doors to be marked with words like "Private", "Danger: keep out", "Entrance", "Staff only" or "Canteen", we might benefit from such knowledge. I believe that the same can be said of headings in articles.

7. Irrelevant facts. Every item of information which assists the reader must be provided if he is to understand a legal proposition or follow the logic of a decided legal dispute. Conversely, every item of information which does not assist the reader is likely to distract him. The writer knows, even as he writes, what information is crucial and what is not; he provides the witty asides, the subtle allusions, the gratuitous tidbits that can make a piece of prose so enjoyable. The reader however will only know which information is relevant once he has finished reading -- by which time he may have been struggling to retain factual data which he assumed to be important but which was no more than a whimsical aside.

8. Padding. Take the following sentence: "It is significant to note, as may be apparent to the reader, that the feline mammal was occupying, in a sense, a wholly if not entirely sedentary position within the general context of what was, as could clearly be seen in this situation, a horizontally-spread woven textile floor-covering, as is sometimes -- but not always -- the case". This is just a drawn-out way of saying "The cat sat on the mat". If you think this is an extreme example, you are right -- but I have many examples of apparently sentences which have been subjected to vigorous editorial liposuction, to their benefit.

9. Terminology. If your jurisdiction employs unusual words or concepts, or if the judiciary, lawyers and clients converse with one another in Latin, please do not wait to be invited to provide an explanation. You can be sure that the editorial team, starting with me, will not allow any words or phrases to go into print if we cannot understand them.

10. Bad English. No author should feel any sense of shame or embarrassment in putting a submission before a friend or colleague who is more literate than he or she is, in order to weed out errors in spelling, grammar and syntax. Peer reviewers have often complained at the poor standard of the text they are evaluating, sometimes commenting that it distracts them from their principal task of judging the suitability of the content. Twenty or thirty years ago, a comment such as this would have been aimed mainly at foreign authors. This is no longer the case. Linguistic excellence among authors whose first language is not English, combined with a marked decline in English language skills in England itself, have produced the sad result that many of the worst offenders are native English speakers. Readers of JIPLP will never know how badly written the first draft of a submission is, but please make it easier for us to polish your prose into the finished article.