This year’s annual CIPA Intellectual Property (IP) Ball took place on Saturday 15 July at the Wren & Shakespeare Suite, Leonardo Royal Hotel London St Paul’s – highly appropriate for the “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” theme that this year’s committee chose!
For those who aren’t aware, the IP ball is an annual charity ball for IP professionals of all disciplines, raising money for Great Ormond Street Hospital. This extraordinary hospital has always depended on charitable support to give the children at GOSH the best chance to fulfil their potential, and the ball is a chance for us to make a difference.
A particular focus this year was to raise money to help fund GOSH’s new world-class Children’s Cancer Centre which aims to treat children from all over the UK. GOSH cares for children with the hardest-to-treat cancers but needs a new home with facilities capable of delivering breakthrough therapies which will help more children beat cancer.
Each year, the profits from the ticket sales and sponsorship, and funds raised on the night by way of the annual raffle (and for the first time this year, a silent auction!), are donated to GOSH Children’s Charity. Whilst at the time of writing we are still finalizing the total amount raised from this year’s event, it’s looking highly likely that we will be donating several thousand pounds to GOSH Children’s Charity again.
All proceeds from the ball will help GOSH make a difference to the lives of the children they look after and their families so on behalf of all the ball organizing committee, I would like to say an enormous thank you to every single person who bought tickets the ball and participated in our raffle and silent auction to help us raise this amount. I would also like to say thank you to our amazing sponsors who helped us put on the event: CIPA, the CIPA Informals, JDD Consultants, J A Kemp, Gill Jennings & Every, Sacco Mann, Mathys and Squire, and our premium sponsor Marks and Clerk.
We had an amazing team of suppliers, such as Globexpert Fundraising (our silent auction providers), Ozey’s Photography (our professional photographer who got some brilliant shots of the ball, as you can see), Booth Kings (providing the ever popular photo booth), Glitterbox (very talented face painters), JWS Events DJ (getting the dance floor going), Ricky Paul Flowers and The Flower Bank (providing the stunning floral trees and centrepieces) and of course the very talented live musicians performing throughout the evening. All the photos can be found here: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjANKKZ
An especially big thank you goes to all the other volunteers on this year’s committee who generously gave up their time over the last few months. Isabel Valdes, Robbi Sher, Lucy Cotton, Alexandra Stacey, Rebecca Bennett, Mathew Hedges, Liam Jones, Luke Murray, and Nickeal Sidhu have been absolutely stellar over the last few months and deserve recognition for how hard they have all worked on the ball – all whilst balancing full-time work as trainee patent attorneys and for many of them, exams alongside!
It’s worth a special mention how dedicated the decorations team were to maximizing sustainability and impact: Izzy and Robbi had a brilliant idea of using potted plants as our table centrepieces that we could donate to GOSH after the event. Just a few hours after the ball ended, Izzy and Robbi were back at the Leonardo hotel transporting almost 100 plants to GOSH (at 7am on a Sunday!). We are really pleased to confirm that all of them have been planted in GOSH’s new Sight and Sound Garden, the UK’s first dedicated facility for children with sight and hearing loss.
We also were delighted to host Alexa Broude at the ball, a GOSH ambassador who made a very inspiring speech at the start of dinner about the impact GOSH and GOSH Children’s Charity have had on her family, reminding us all why we were there. Alexa deserves the biggest thank you of all for sharing her family’s story with us.
All that’s left to say is: we hope everyone who came enjoyed the evening as much as we did! If you would like to know more about the IP ball, including how to join the committee to help organize the next ball, then please reach out to Lindsay, the 2023 IP Ball President, at LJPike@mathys-squire.com.
Lindsay J. Pike, CIPA IP Ball President 2023
The Yellow Sheet 