Alex Smith (Sellafield Ltd) observed that there was already a perfectly good IP-based proverb in "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". Nonetheless, the IPKat was hoping that readers would coin some fresh words of wisdom rather than recognise the relevance of old ones.

From Antony Gallafent (Gallafents) came "A patent a day keeps the infringer away", which left the IPKat wondering about Apple's current spat with Nokia in the United States [on which the AmeriKat has this to say]. A kindred spirit is Sunelle Geyer (Senior Lecturer in Mercantile Law, Unisa) with "An application a day keeps infringement at bay". Coincidence or collusion?

Not a proverb by the IPKat's reckoning but deemed to be one by Wikipedia -- and none the less enjoyable for all that -- is the poetic parody of the well-known children's rhyme by Sue Scott (Abel & Imray):

For want of attention, the claim was lost;The IPKat sincerely hopes that Ms Scott's job is safe. Anyone who can create such elegant verse must write the most beautiful patent claims.
For want of the claim, the patent was lost;
For want of the patent, the market was lost;
For want of the market, the business was lost;
For want of the business, my job was lost.
And all for the want of attention.
A more mathemetical frame of mind was displayed by Kilburn & Strode's Jim Miller, who won the CIPA Drafting Prize in 1995 but hasn't let that affect his sense of humour: "The number of letters a patent attorney receives is proportional to the cube root of the number he writes to his client" [This initially flummoxed Merpel, who, not being a consumer of brassica, didn't know the difference between 'cube root' and 'club root'].
The laconic Lucy Holloway (Swindell & Pearson almost makes Calvin Coolidge sound like a chatterbox with her memorably short "No claim, no gain".

"Virgil says "felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas" ("happy is he who knows how things work"), but how about "Feles qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas" ("A Kat is he who knows how things work") [Merpel says, it may well be Virgil, but I still think it was Lucretius].Jeremy Cronk (a trainee at Freshfields) came up with a couple of good talking points: "The road to wealth is paved with good inventions" and "Genius is an infinite capacity for taking patents". Ascending the hierarchy within the same firm, Associate Katherine [Kat] Westall proposed "The early bird catches the worm, but the intellectual property lawyer always gets the cheese". Finally we have the magisterial presence of the IPKat's friend Justin Watts, with a couple of crackers: "A leopard can't change its spots and they're probably not even an original work under German copyright law" and the splendidly biblical allusion to one of Europe's finest judges: "Whatever you got away with in the past, Jacob won't give you anything for a mess of potage now".

* "'tis better to have lodged and lapsed than never to have lodged at all"
* "It's a poor workman who claims his research tools"
* "All's fair use in love and war"
* "UCC no evil, OHIM no evil, SPC no evil"
* "ALAI iacta est"
* "The unexamined patent is not worth litigating" [The IPKat, with his classical training, remembers the bios anexetastos in the Apology of Plato]
* "ACTA speaks louder than words".

We think that should be 'tuus homo' rather than 'tuum hominem' (the phrase is not the object but the complement of the verb).
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