IP and Women in Science

8.00 Arrive in the office and assemble my amendments on the innovation report ready to discuss them with Toine Manders at 9.00. He agrees to cosign all mine and we add in another that he suggests.

10.00 Gary and Mark arrive to inform me on the latest developments in Council on the Payments directive. Rest of the morning spent looking at the latest Presidency documents. It still all looks very stuck to me.

12.30 Lunch debate on Women and Science. Quite interesting. One of the sponsors, L’Oreal obviously do a lot of research and have a platform that is useful for engaging with girls who are not instinctively drawn to science. I agree to be involved in their program. This is all quite reminiscent of years ago when I acted as a role model for a women in science for Bedfordshire County Council and went giving talks at schools.

15.00 Trialogue on PSD. The Presidency present their latest proposals. We will probably meet again next week in Strasbourg. Pervenche Beres attends as well as the rapporteur and shadows.

17.30 Just get in to the tail end of the Group meeting.

18.30 I have a meeting with Nicola Zingaretti on his report about criminal sanctions in IP. I explain the reasoning behind my amendment which makes the criminality contingent upon aggravated circumstances such as counterfeiting, piracy, organised crime or risk to health and safety. I think this covers the main reasons such procedures are needed and cuts out the risk from the normal way in which an invalid or suspect patent, design or trade mark is usually infringed (and no action normally taken) rather than expensive revocation proceedings being launched. Anyway, he understood so at least it gives him food for thought and it does not diverge from being a blanket approach across all IP which has some advantages in terms of legal base.

19.00 Shuffle the usual paperwork and emails then return to flat at about 8.00pm.