Berlin, Germany – Back from Berlin

I was fortunate to be selected by my firm to represent the firm at the 130th International Trade Mark Association Conference (INTA) at Berlin, Germany.

ICC, official venue for INTA

This yearly conference is attended by as many as 8000 trade mark owners and Intellectual Property practitioners from all over the world. It was a great eye opener and it was a wonderful experience to meet loads of people throughout the 5 days event. By the 3rd day, I ran out of business cards.

Name cards that I collected for the past 5 days.

The Chinese law firms and intellectual property firms were very aggressive on their marketing. They setup many booths at the convention centre and Chinese IP practitioners are everywhere. The Indians were fairly aggressive as well. I met one lawyer by the name Xerxes.

Xerxes: People in India had a hard time remembering my name. Some call me Xerox (well known document management company).

I also had the opportunity to bump into actor Randall Duk Kim, also known as the Keymaker from Matrix Reloaded. Initially I didn’t believe that he was the guy from Matrix Reloaded but after he recited a line from Matrix Reloaded, I believed him. He was in Berlin to shoot a film by the name Ninja Assassins with the Wachoski Brothers.

When I was called to attend this conference, I knew it was no holiday.

My day usually starts at 7am and thereafter meetings after meetings until dinner time. After dinner, we will attend all sorts of receptions held by large international companies or Intellectual Property firms. The whole process usually lasts until 12am. Since its a reception, we had to run around to make new friends and hence didn’t have the chance to sit down. It was truly a one night stand – I was standing the whole night.

We went home exhausted everyday. It was worst than working in the office. Sitting in the office from 7AM to 12AM everyday is not that bad.

Receptions were held in all sorts of unique places. We had receptions at places such as an embassy, a museum, old town hall and even rooftop of a building.

Old town hall

Museum

Reception on roof top

Daimler had their reception at their flagship store with all their cars ranging from old to new and cheap to expensive placed all over the store.

Daimler flagship store

The store even has a rock climbing wall.