Core competencies and the IPO

A tweet from the UK Intellectual Property Office alerted this Kat to the availability of two vacancies for officers in the IPO's Information Centre. Details of the vacancies appear here and all the Kats hope that whoever gets these jobs will be their friends, since the blogging community thrives on information from the IPO -- particularly if it is (i) really exciting, (ii) devoid of any references to Wallace and Gromit and (iii) leaked well in advance.

The IPO's Current Vacancies front page attracted the IPKat's attention for another reason. Right on-screen, in full view of the reader, is a photograph (right) of what appear to be one and a half apples. This puzzled him very greatly. IPO vacancies tend to be in Newport (where the office is located) or in London, neither of which is known as a centre for the cultivation of apples other than toffee apples. As cities go, London is big -- but it's not the Big Apple. Then, on a further reading of the particulars of the two vacancies, the truth dawned on him. The illustration was an allusion to the job specification, which offers (inter alia):

"... a flexible work scheme which has no core hours ..."

That's it! The illustration represents the apple, but not the core -- a point which should surely be appreciated by all 'appl-icants' ...

Merpel says, this is no joking matter. Who paid for this apple photo? Why is it on the site at all? Whatever happened to public spending cuts and austerity measures? If an illustration was needed, wouldn't just half an apple have sufficed? And is the IPO the owner of the copyright, or a licensee -- or is this apple an orphan? Let's have another inquiry!
Core competencies and the IPO Core competencies and the IPO Reviewed by Jeremy on Thursday, November 10, 2011 Rating: 5

11 comments:

  1. well, it made me immediately think of the amount of remuneration, even though this I guess might be better illustrated with an apple and an egg for German readers or a couple of peanuts for the Brits..

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  2. "The Information Centre receives up to 10,000 calls each month from customers requiring advice on all areas of Intellectual Property"

    In difficult economic times govts must tighten their belts and my firm would happily sponsor a telephone answer machine with a recorded message and/or call forwarding.

    The message shall read "For professional and impartial advice on IP matters we recommend that you contact a local patent or trademark attorney. Your call will now be forwarded to one of our preferred partner organisations."

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  3. These must be Newtonian apples, to visualise the gravity of the job.

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  4. More importantly, there are clearly serious IP issues involved in displaying a representation of an apple on a computer monitor...

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  5. Does an apple for a job infringe the rights in Job's Apple?
    We can't even get ourselves out of this recession because bright futures belong to Orange. What a pear.

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  6. It looks like just another cox up to me.

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  7. You mean to say it's not an Apfelkind Café advert?

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  8. Other more suitable fruit:

    currant (... vacancy)
    plum (... job)
    date (... for interview)

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  9. It's a Royalty Free microstock image from Dreamstime image 3531599 available for about $2 or less.

    Photographer is well known shooter Ron Chapple using the pseudonym lofoto images

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  10. various versions are available, here's the exact one I think on Cutcaster, image 100104217

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  11. Justin, thank you for raisin those points, but I feel we should avoid being medlars in the IPO's refruitment practices, even if they are sloe to respond to IPKat's questions.

    ReplyDelete

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