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| Sir William Grove Welsh Scientist, Inventor, Barrister and Judge Author Murgatroyd49 Licence CC BY-SA 4.0 Source Wikimedia |
For the last 8 years, intellectual property specialists living or working in Yorkshire have met at the Leeds Double Tree Hilton every three months or so to hear a presentation by a retired or serving judge or barrister at the intellectual property bar. These meetings have been very successful, and I have commented on visits by Sir Robin Jacob, Sir Colin Birss, His Honour Judge Hacon, Justin Turner KC and other speakers in NIPC Yorkshire.
TIPSY meetings serve two very useful purposes. They keep us up to date with developments in the law and they help us to get to know each other which probably makes it easier for us to do business on behalf of our clients. When I have mentioned TIPSY to colleagues outside Yorkshire, they have often remarked that they should have something like TIPSY in their regions.
One of the regions in which such remarks have been expressed is North West Wales. The region has a science park, a research university with strong departments in design, engineering and law, the North Wales Medical School, the Pontio Centre with its FabLab and theatre and a hearing centre of the High Court that can resolve many kinds of intellectual property disputes. The region is an important centre for Welsh language broadcasting, publishing and education. A PatLib library will open at M-SParc.
An important difference between North West Wales and Yorkshire is that the population of North West Wales is very much smaller than that of Yorkshire. There are fewer intellectual property practitioners and they know each other well enough already. For that reason, evening meetings at a posh hotel every few months would probably not work.
By contrast, late afternoon or early evening meetings livestreamed from venues in different parts of Wales to attendees in the rest of the country possibly might. The venue hosting a presentation might provide light refreshments to attendees who wish to attend in person. Presentations would focus on issues of particular interest to Wales. These might include plant breeders' rights because Aberystwyth's Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences is the leading centre in grassland research in the United Kingdom. Copyright licensing with regard to Welsh language materials is another topic of particular interest to Welsh practitioners and their clients.
Local groups of members could support pro bono clinics, inventors' clubs and makers' groups in their neighbourhoods. They could provide work experience or mini pupillages to local law students. They could coach founders in pitching to business angels and private equity investors.
Pryderi ap Rhisiart, M-SParc's Managing Director, has kindly agreed to host the first meeting of a Welsh Intellectual Property Society in the science park and to provide refreshments in the Caffi Tanio for networking. If the first meeting is a success, I shall look for venues in other parts of Wales for the second and subsequent meetings. Slides of presentations will be uploaded to Slideshare, and copies of papers will be available in PDF format through a searchable database.
Over the next few weeks, I shall be canvassing support for this project from patent and trade mark attorneys, specialist lawyers in private practice, scholars in the universities and others with an interest in IP. Anyone wishing to discuss this article should call me on 020 7404 5252 during UK office hours or send me a message through my contact form at any time.
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