The Dromedary effect: design by committee and the Unitary Patent Hump

At the end of July, Katfriend Gary Moss (a solicitor and a partner in EIP when he's not producing tidbits for this weblog) was a speaker at the annual High Tech Summit which takes place at the Center for Advanced Research into Intellectual Property (CASRIP) at the University of Washington, Seattle. Gary was on a panel discussing the Unitary Patent and its impact [Gosh, says Merpel, they are even discussing European patent issues on the shores of the Pacific. And to think it's only a short while ago that we Europeans all had our noses buried in the American Invents Act. How very interested we are in each other's affairs in this ever-shrinking, not-quite-joined-up world!]  Gary posed the question "Is the Unitary Patent Court (UPC) a horse designed by a committee?" This harks back to the famous saying often attributed to motor car designer Sir Alec Issigonis that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. This Kat considers that Gary may have a point -- save for one thing; this oft-quoted bon mot implies that the members of the committee are well-intentioned but that hidden forces push them into coming up with something which is sub-optimal. However, having read the very inciteful [the IPKat thinks Gary means "insightful" but Merpel, who knows better, says "inciteful" is right] article recently written by Dr Ingve Björn Stjerna (here), it would appear that the resulting camel (a.k.a. the UPC) was a deliberate piece of legislative engineering by the Commission and its Rapporteurs.

"I laugh at you;
so does my camel!"

Nevertheless Gary thought he would share with us the fact that, in the course of his researches, he came across the illustration on the right which neatly encapsulates where we have now got to -- and the apparent attitude of those who are responsible. Perhaps it can be adopted as the UPC's emblem .  Gary's researches also led him to this little gem on Wikipedia under "Design by Committtee".

"The term is used to refer to suboptimal traits that such a process may produce as a result of having to compromise between the requirements and viewpoints of the participants, particularly in the presence of poor leadership or poor technical knowledge, such as needless complexity, internal inconsistency, logical flaws, banality, and the lack of a unifying vision. This democratic design process is in contrast to autocratic design, or design by dictator, where the project leader decides on the design. 

The term is especially common in technical parlance; it legitimizes the need and general acceptance of a unique systems architect and stresses the need for technical quality over political feasibility" (emphases added). 

As Del Boy used to say "mange tout, Rodney, mange tout".

A final word from the IPKat, who is no great admirer of the UPC but has a great deal of respect for camels: why do people always assert that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, rather than recognise the real truth that a horse is a camel designed by a sole inventor -- which is why so many people who back horses lose their money.