Cruel, corrupt patent troll: yes, I repent!

IP Draughts is proud to announce that he has won an important prize.  No, not a knighthood ahead of David Beckham; nor canonisation.

Canonisation? scoffs Mr Pettifog.  In your dreams.

And yet…

About 15 years ago, IP Draughts and the Draughtatrix were travelling on a bus on the island of Madeira, when an old lady sitting in the row behind – a local not a tourist – became very animated and friendly. She spoke no English, and IP Draughts speaks no Portuguese, so the conversation was limited.  She pulled out of her bag a small, sepia-tinted photograph of a rather serious-looking, 11-year-old boy. From the caption, it seemed that he had died in childhood about a century ago, and had been beatified (a formal step towards sainthood in the Roman Catholic church) for his good deeds.  It was clear that she thought IP Draughts was the spitting image of this boy, and she pressed the photo into his hands.    He still has it somewhere.

Instead, something even more remarkable…

IP Draughts is the winner of the IPKat competition to find an anagram for the name of the new English court for small scale IP matters, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court.

His solution? Cruel, corrupt patent troll: yes, I repent!

On hearing about this achievement, the Draughtatrix enquired whether there was a prize, and if so whether it was a holiday for two in somewhere like Madeira.  IP Draughts was able to reassure her that there is a prize, and it is almost as good as a holiday for two, as it is a copy of the Butterworths’ Intellectual Property Handbook.