Sven’s Glass House

I’d gone to Washington, DC last week.
I attended the American Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Law conference (link).
I hit up museums, monuments, etc.

Conference nutshell:
IP law is my field of interest in law, so this was a good fit.
On Thursday and Friday there were two 1.5 hour classes, then a luncheon, then two more 1.5 hour classes. Saturday there was a 3 hour class in the morning then release.
The classes came in two key flavors: patent or copyright/trademark/trade-dress.
This time I went pretty much exclusively to the second category (in part because I can’t properly practice patent cases without sitting for the patent bar, which I’ll likely do someday).

I learned of the practices of the TTAB, the ins and outs of private labels (regarding trade dress, as seen here), I looked at the Perfect 10 cases from a few angles (link), some cases that were decided rightly, some wrongly, potential laws to crackdown on cybercrime (that in my opinion went too far), and the keynote speakers from the luncheons were great.

The networking was a bit more complicated than expected. During lectures wasn’t a good time to meet folk. The first day I was exhausted from the flying, the driving, and the not sleeping well… thusly I wasn’t the most outgoing person on the first day. Luncheons were good as people wanted to meet people there. Time between classes wasn’t the best time to meet folk as people wanted to go to the restroom and secure a good spot in the next class (myself included).

Someone said the first conference you go to is to learn how to go to conferences. I’d gone to another conference some time back (as seen here), but almost everything was different. That one was in a university, this one was in a hotel’s conference area. That one was with several classmates, this one I brought my mother (not to the conference parts). That one was populated by a big mix of law students, environmental sciences students, activists and lawyers, this one was populated almost entirely with IP lawyers (almost no students and I was probably the 12th youngest person there). That one had some classes of very small size that were very conducive to dialog, this one had very standardized lecture size (with about 140 people attending each class). That one I wore a hoodie and fit in just fine, this time I was dressed up but wasn’t wearing a tie or a jacket and my colors were the brightest out of any guy there (from what I saw). That one was paid for by the school, this one was out of pocket.

But I learned a lot and I’m likely to go next time if I can afford to. There are sort of three of these per year, each one with a slightly different flavor in a different town (LA, NY and DC). So I don’t know if I should sample them each, consistently go to the DC one, or set my goal on affording to go to all three every year).

Tourism nutshell:

food
Thursday and Friday lunches were luncheons.
Wednesday dinner was at Elephant & Castle a stone’s throw away from the National Mall.
Thursday dinner was at McCormick & Schmick a stone’s throw away from my hotel.
Friday dinner was at Asia Nine (link to reviews).
Saturday and Sunday lunches were at the Native American Smithsonian (the museum and its restaurant).
Saturday dinner was at M&S Grill on 15th & E St.
It was all very good, but I love the food from Mitsitam Café (the name of the restaurant in the Native American Smithsonian) the most. I’d love to open a Native American restaurant in KC.

Also, the service my mother and I got at Elephant & Castle was pretty terrible. We stood for a couple of minutes before being approached when we entered. We were seated about 8 minutes before a server came by to see if we might like water. I had to wait about 6 minutes for my Coke to be refilled. But the fish & chips tasted good and the bread pudding was exceptionally good.

museums
Madam Tussauds Wax Musseum (link)
Smithsonian: Native American
Smithsonian: Natural History (link)
Smithsonian: Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden (link)
National Gallery of Art (link)
International Spy Museum ()

Madam Tussauds takes about 45 minutes and I feel that I got the full experience. Some of the wax folk were unnervingly real looking. It was nice to go to a museum that you are encouraged to touch the exhibits.

Smithsonian: Native American didn’t get much of my time. I was primarily there for the food. Last time I was in DC I’d quite nearly exhausted it. Again the food is tops.

Smithsonian: Natural History was gone through a bit briskly as it was the last place I visited. It deserved far more time and attention. I think I only went into about half of the exhibits and a few of those I did go into were walked through too quickly. Great museum.

Smithsonian: Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden I didn’t go inside the building, but I did wander through the sculpture garden. Some very cool pictures were taken of very cool sculptures, I’ll share them before too long.

National Gallery of Art is phenomenal and inspiring. I still haven’t had the opportunity to give it the proper time. I probably only went into a third of the chambers. Many pictures were taken. The National Gallery is still my favorite place to hit up in DC.

International Spy Museum was pretty great. There was a thing called ‘Operation Spy’ where you get to do a simulated spy mission. Do some surveillance, comb a room for evidence, conduct an interrogation. The spy museum itself had very good exhibits and much to be learned. I do recommend it. It takes about three hours to get about everything that they have to offer.

monuments etc
I hit up pretty much all the monuments (the main ones).
And the Cherry Blossom Festival was going on.

Pictures of everything will be up at some point in the near future.
I took plenty of them.
I had bought myself a sweet new camera (link).

All told it was a pretty decent trip.
I’ll probably go on a tirade regarding the GPS sometime in the new future…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 5:11 pm and is filed under life, law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.