M-SParc's World IP Day Celebrations

 

Jane Lambert

World Intellectual Property Day is an international festival of creativity, enterprise and innovation on or around 26 April of every year.  The Menai Science Park ("M-SParc") has celebrated the event every year since 2019.  Information about its previous celebrations can be found on the World Intellectual Property Day portal of this website.

Each year, the festivities revolve around a different theme.  This year's theme is music. I wrote about that topic in World Intellectual Property Day 2025 - IP and Music: Feel the Beat of IP on 28 Dec 2024.  As I noted in that article, "music is an art form in which Wales excels in every genre and at every level."  As in previous years, M-SParc plans to hold a lunchtime seminar to celebrate the event.  As 26 April falls on a weekend this year, the seminar will take place between 12:00 and 14:00 on 29 April 2025.

Gwenllian Owen, M-SParc's Innovation and Commercialization Officer, has put together a great programme of talks which will include contributions from 

• Emma Richards of the Intellectual Property Office on IP strategy, 
• Dr Steffan Thomas of Bangor University Business School on music copyright, 
• Copyright consultant Dafydd Roberts on copyright, publishing and performance. 
• John Hywel Morris of the Performing Right Society on collecting societies, and  
• Liam Kurmos of Busnes Cymru on copyright and artificial intelligence.

I shall chair the event as in previous years.  We have invited a lot of distinguished guests from the performing arts, universities, legal profession in Wales and beyond.  Everybody who attends will have an opportunity to say a few words from the floor.

This promises to be M-SParc's most ambitious celebration of World IP Day yet. If you happen to be in Northwest Wales on the day, you will be welcome to join us in person at M-SParc.  Anyone, anywhere else in the world, can attend by video link.  In either case, click this link and follow the simple registration instructions on the Eventbrite card.

Anyone wishing to discuss this article may call me on +44 (0)20 7404 5252 during the usual UK office hours or send me a message through my contact form at any other time.

World Intellectual Property Day - M-SParc's Luchtime Seminar

Jane Lambert

World Intellectual Property Day - Celebrating Wales.s Women Entrepreneurs, Inventors and Creatives - Menai Science Park 26 April 2023 12:30 

It is less than three weeks to World Intellectual Property Day.   For readers who missed my post, World Intellectual Property Dat 2023, on 27 Jan 2023, it is a worldwide festival of creativity, enterprise and innovation which takes place on 26 April of every year.  Each year the celebrations focus on a different theme.  This year's theme will be Women and IP:  Accelerating Innovation and Creativity.  In keeping with that theme, the Menai Science Park ("M-SParc") will celebrate the contribution of women entrepreneurs, inventors and creatives in Wales.

As in previous years, the main celebration at M-SParc will be a lunchtime seminar which will take place in one of the conference rooms and online.  One of the speakers will be Anna Roberts, the founder and CEO of Explorage.com.  That company has just launched a new web-based service that helps those with goods to store to find the optimum self-storage facilities in their area.  It also puts those with self-storage facilities in touch with members of the public looking for self-storage.  Emily Roberts has written about the service in Explorage com Launches New Platform which she posted to M-SParc's website on 6 April 2023.

Explorage.com is one of many innovative new businesses that are based in M-SParc.  Most provide services which is to be expected in a mature economy such as the United Kingdom where services account for 79.2% of GDP.  That is comparable to France at 78.8%, Germany at 71.1% and the USA at 79.7%. Protecting innovation in services is challenging because the world's intellectual property system was constructed during the industrial revolution when the priority was to protect innovation in manufacturing.  That may explain the exclusions of schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers as such from the definition of patentable inventions in art 52 (2) (c) of the European Patent Convention,  Also, it was not until the mid-1980s that the Trade Marks Act 1938 was amended to enable the registration of trade marks for services.

As there is no such thing as a service patent, new services have to be protected indirectly. That requires an analysis of the service provider's income-generating assets and a plan for protecting them which ideally should be incorporated into the enterprise's business plan.   In most cases, it is the brand that attracts customers so the enterprise will have to fund the registration of a trade mark in all the countries in which it intends to do business.  Sometimes the most important asset will be technical or commercial information. Trade secrecy law throughout Europe has recently been codified by the Trade Secrets Directive which remains part of our law notwithstanding Brexit.  Thought also has to be given to enforcement which remains expensive despite efforts of the courts and legal professions to minimize the costs.  For most small businesses, IP enforcement requires specialist insurance the premiums for which should also be written into the business plan.

These and other issues will be on the menu at M-SParc's lunchtime seminar on 26 April 2023.  If you want to book your place at the table or are looking for more information, call me at +44 (0)20 7404 5252 during office hours or message me through my contact form.

World IP Day 2022: IP and Youth: "Innovating for a Better Future"

 

Since 26 April 2019, the Menai Science Park (M-SParc) has led Wales's contribution to the worldwide festival of creativity, enterprise and innovation known as World Intellectual Property Day. Each year the festival focuses on a different theme. The theme for this year is "IP and Youth: Innovating for a Better Future."  At a video conference earlier in the year, Emily Roberts, Jamie Thomas and I  interpreted that phrase as "a celebration of the creativity, enterprise and innovation of young people around the world."  Accordingly, we agreed to celebrate the creativity, enterprise and innovation of the young people of Wales.

Wales's choral tradition is renowned but it is also a dancing nation.  Its classical dance company, Ballet Cymru has created a rich repertoire that features exciting new works such as Dylan Thomas – A Child’s Christmas, Poems and Tiger Eggs and Tir to the music of Cerys Matthews but also adaptations of Giselle, Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella for small casts in tiny theatres.  The company has presented those works in rural and inner-city venues around the United Kingdom and beyond.  Ballet Cymru's super-talented young artists will dance for us in their studio in Newport and their artistic director, Darius James will discuss their outreach work for the children and young people of Wales.

One of the leaders of the US space programme was an Anglesey man called Tecwyn Roberts.  He never forgot the junior school that had given him his start and he revisited it. at the height of his career.  One of the students of the school at the time of his visit was a little girl called Nia Roberts. Nia was inspired to read natural sciences at university.  She has also enjoyed a glittering career in science to inspire a new generation of school kids to follow her into STEM.

Tecwyn had to leave Wales for a career in space.  That is no longer necessary for Wales has a rapidly growing space sector which is attracting bright young men and women from around the world.  Representatives of that industry will outline some of the opportunities for new businesses in everything from telecommunications to remote sensing and mention the highly paid 

jobs that will be available to those who want to work in them.

All of that requires entrepreneurs ready to spot the opportunities and exploit them. Who better to talk about that infrastructure than Tom Burke, founder and CEO of the communications platform Haia. Tom will tell us how he developed Haia at M-SParc and how local financial and professional service providers have helped him to grow his business.

Tom, Nia, Darius and others will speak at a lunchtime seminar between 12:30 and 14:00 on 26 April 2022 that anyone anywhere in the world can join online.  Those who happen to be in M-Sparc on the day can also attend in person.  Register here to secure your place. There will also be an all-day exhibition at M-SParc on the Welsh space industry, Ballet Cymru, Haia and all sorts of other contributions to World IP Day in Wales and around the world. 

Further Reading

26 April 2022  Intellectual Property Office: Innovating for a Better Future: Intellectual property and youth

2 April 2022 Diwrnod Eiddo Deallusol y Byd / World Intellectual Property Day

March 2022  Nadine Hakizimana and Edward Kwakwa  Now’s the time for young people to switch on to intellectual property  WIPO Wire

28 Dec 2021  Jane Lambert World IP Day and Youth

Completion of Aberystwyth's Science Park on Time and on Budget

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Jane Lambert

On 24 Aug 2020, a huge replica of a key was handed to the management of the Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus (Aberinnovation) at Gogerddan to mark the completion of the construction. According to Ben Jones. it was finished on time and on budget (see Jones Handover signals the completion of the new Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus 26 Aug 2020). The construction of that science park would have been noteworthy at any time but, as much of the work had to be carried out during lockdown, it is all the more remarkable.
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I first learned about the plan to build a science park when I visited Aberystwyth University's Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Science ("IBERS") on 13 March 2019 to deliver a talk on Intellectual Property Rights relating to Waste Management and Sustainable Packaging at a workshop on sustainable packaging and waste that had been organized by the Beacon Biorefining Centre of Excellence.  IBERS and Beacon had been at Gogerddan for many years. IBERS has a worldwide reputation for its research in agriculture, plant breeding and related technologies while Beacon is a partnership between Aberystwyth and several other Welsh universities to commercialize research in those technologies.  The idea of the science park was to attract a cluster of science and technology-based businesses to Gogerddan that could contribute to such research as well as exploit it.  I discussed the idea of clusters when I visited IBERS for a second time on 19 June 2019 for a workshop  entitled "From Plants to Bio-Based Products The Challenges to and Opportunities for Development and Scale-up in Wales." (see Jane Lambert
"From Plants to Bio-Based Products" Motivation and Mutual Learning Workshop in Aberystwyth on 21 June 2010).

On 28 Feb 2020, the science park published its first newsletter which I blogged in Aberinnovation: Mid-Wales's New Science Park.   The newsletter discussed the progress of the construction work and its first seminars.   I learned about the completion of the project from Mr Jones's newsletter which was mentioned on Linkedin.  It appears from its website that all the science park's facilities are now open, that the first tenants have moved in, an accelerator for businesses in biosciences, healthcare, agri-tech and food and drink sectors will be launched in September and a webinar with Dr Rhian Hayward, the park's chief executive officer, will take place on 23 Sept 2020.

The inventions, new plant and seed varieties and other technologies to be developed in Gogerddan as well as the brands of the new businesses will require legal protection if they are to be exploited.  According to the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys' database, there are no patent attorneys within 50 miles of Gorgoddan.  That is also true of the Menai Science Park (M-SParc) on Anglesey but over the last 2 years a number of support networks have formed to advise and assist not just the park's tenants but all other businesses in Northwest Wales (see Ecosystem 2.0 of 21 Aug 2020).  Those networks presented Wales's only contribution to World Intellectual Property Day in 2019 and 2020.  There is no reason why similar networks should not emerge around Gogerddan. If they do, I should be glad to participate in them.

Anyone wishing to discuss this article or any of the issues contained in it may call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

Aberinnovation: Mid-Wales's New Science Park

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Jane Lambert

Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus ("Aberinnovation") has just distributed its first newsletter.  It contains news of

• the construction of the campus, 
• a half-day conference on business funding by the Development Bank of Wales and Angels Invest Wales which will take place at the offices of Aberinnovation on 24 March 2020, and 
• a business breakfast to be attended by Hannah Blythyn AM (Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government) on the theme "Making the Circular Economy in Wales a Reality" in the William Davies Hall on the Gogerddan campus at 08:30 on 26 March 2020.

On the construction of the campus, the newsletter reports that the Future Food Centre, Advanced Analysis Centre and Innovation Hub will be fully operational by October 2020. They will join the Biorefining Centre and Seed Biobank to form AberInnovation's core capabilities.

According to the History page of the campus's website, Aberinnovation is a joint project between Aberystwyth University and the Biotechnology and the Biological Sciences Research Council "to convert the 21st Century’s grand challenges of food, water and energy security into sustainable and prosperous opportunities for society, recognising that innovation in agriculture and the food supply chain will play a critical role in fostering a knowledge-based bio-economy."  The vision for the campus is to create a world leading facility for bio-science research, developing ground breaking products for the agri-tech market.

Anyone wishing to discuss this article or any of the topics mentioned in it should call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

Related Article

Date	Author	Title	Publication
21.06.19	Jane Lambert	"From Plants to Bio-Based Products" Motivation and Mutual Learning Workshop in Aberystwyth	NIPC Wales