WIPIP 2014 was a party to remember. We discussed a lot of interesting scholarly projects. We spent time with many friends, old and new. We had food, and lots of it. We had terrific California weather (well, scratch that–we had a rare Pineapple Express that repeatedly spritzed us). We even had an unofficial theme song: Let It Whip by the Dazz Band.
We also had a lot of memorable moments. Here’s our list of some highlights of WIPIP 2014:
#7: M&Ms with IP icons. Have you ever eaten an M&M with Learned Hand’s face on it?
We made custom M&Ms with headshots of various noteworthy historical figures from the IP community, ranging from Thomas Jefferson to Barbara Ringer, proving that people will eat chocolate in any form.
#6: Bryan Choi and Christina Mulligan “rapping” Eminem’s “Slim Shady.” It takes a certain amount of street cred to do rap in karaoke, especially a song with some NSFW lyrics. Bryan and Christina channeled about as much street cred as any legal academics could be expected to muster.
#5: Group photo. Those of you who have been to a conference with Eric Goldman know that he likes to organize group photos. It’s a tall order with a small number of academics, but the challenge of getting about 100 academics to coordinate their activities (even for a few seconds) seemed overwhelming. Yet, in amazingly short order, we were able to put together a pretty good group photo with minimal direction!
#4: Pitch event at Zero1. It’s easy to speculate about what’s on the mind of innovators and the financiers who support them, but attendees at this event got to hear those thoughts directly. Seven entrepreneurs vied in a beauty contest for the right to get some private one-on-one time with a potential investor. How important is intellectual property to their decision-making? Check out the video.
#3: The prizes. Winners of the trivia and karaoke contests raided the special WIPIP prize box containing such IP artifacts as Qualitex ironing board pads, Super Soaker 20s, magazines from 1988 with the Samsung ad featuring the robotic Vanna White, and the grand prize (won by lucky Michael Burstein) of an original signed and framed limited edition print of Gary Saderup’s drawing of the Three Stooges.
#2: And the silver mic goes to: It’s a bold move to pick a cherished classic song from an iconic band and sing it at karaoke. Despite the odds, Jake Linford blew the audience away with a stunning rendition of “Something” by the Beatles, for which he walked away with the highly coveted trophy.
#1: IP Team Trivia Night: Ten teams entered the trivia contest, but by the end of the final round, it was down to two teams, WIP IP Good and Cool WIP. They entered the last question with a tie score. The question asked the teams to quote a lyric from 2 Live Crew’s “Pretty Woman,” and teams would get credit only if their quote was exactly correct. Both teams got 3 of the 4 words correct, but Team WIP IP Good started their answer “the,” while Team Cool WIP started their answer “that.” “The” was the correct answer, propelling Team WIP IP Good to the win. Isn’t it just perfect for an IP academics’ contest that victory turned on the difference between “the” and “that”?
Want to see the questions that stumped dozens of academics? Check out the question deck and the outtakes.
Many thanks to all of the participants at WIPIP 2014 for making the event so wonderful. We hope to see you at WIPIP 2015, February 6-7, 2015, at the USPTO Headquarters, co-sponsored by the USPTO and George Washington University Law School.
