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 2.0of 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.
"Ffiws" means, and is pronounced as, "Fuse" in English. It is the name of a maker space with 3D printers, laser cutters and other digitally controlled equipment. It is a partnership between Menter Môn, Gwynedd Council and several other agencies in North Wales. Earlier this year I was invited to give a talk at its premises in Porthmadog. Sadly, the visit had to be cancelled because of the pandemic but I still delivered the talk over Zoom and my slides can be downloaded from Slideshare if anyone is interested.
I think Ffiws is a great resource and the reason I mention it again now is that it has a base at the Menai Science Park (M-SParc). According to the Ffiws page on the M-SParc website, its facilities are available to the park's tenants and members of the Enterprise hub. Its equipment will also be taken on tour with M-SParc for demonstrations to, and possible use by, residents of the places M-SParc visits. There is similar equipment at the Bangor FabLab in the Pontio Centre though that building is temporarily closed for public health reasons.
On 8 Sept 2020, the business and professional networks that have developed around M-SParc will be celebrated in the Ecosystem 2.0 Webinar. Each member of those networks has been allocated 3 minutes to talk about their work or interests. I shall use mine to propose an inventors' club for North Wales to make use of Ffiws and FabLab and draw on the expertise of the Ecosystem.
"whilst lots of us often spot the potential for a new product or piece of technology, the harsh realities of research and development, prototyping, manufacturing and distribution often mean that few of those ideas actually make it to market."
Those words apply at least as much to inventors, designers, makers and entrepreneurs in Northwest Wales as they do to London. This is the British Library's solution:
"The Inventors’ Club has been established by the Business & IP Centre to give budding inventors the opportunity to network with others in the same boat, hear from speakers who have successfully commercialised their inventions, stay motivated and share insider hints, tips, expertise and experience. You’ll get feedback on your inventions in a safe, non-judgmental environment and also find out about how the Library’s extensive collection of business and commercial data can help you on your journey from someone with a great idea, to having a product on the market."
I set up and chaired inventors' clubs in Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield and supported the ones in Blackburn and Manchester. I can say from experience that they work. In each of those cities, the clubs helped entrepreneurs and inventors to set up new businesses or license the manufacture and sale of their products to other companies.
The Wessex Region of Technologists and Inventors in Southampton has published a useful article on Starting an Inventors Clubon its website. A Northwest Wales inventors' club is not something that can be run from outside. Local people must want it enough to set it up and manage it. If anybody in Northwest Wales is willing to take the initiative I shall place my expertise, experience and connections at his or her disposal. Anybody wishing to discuss this proposal may call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.
"I’m putting together an event called ‘M-SParc’s Ecosystem’ – who are the people who work closely with us and our tenants, providing added value to them.
We would like to extend the invitation to yourself; it’s only a 3-4 minute slot, with around 20 others speaking.
The date in mind at the moment would be September 8th, 10am."
Naturally, I jumped at the invitation and rather rashly promised to give some of my 3 minutes in Welsh if I can find a Welsh speaker who lives near me to correct my grammar and pronunciation.
The aim of the webinar is to show people that the region’s ecosystem is still going! Innovation is happening, new things are taking place, and everyone is still working together through it all!
"North West Wales is full of businesses and ventures that work together. That's how we get so much done! Come and hear who's part of the Ecosystem, and how they've been encouraging and supporting each other through this difficult time."
Anyone who wants to attend the event can register here.
I must now deliver on my promise. According to Wikipedia, there are 133,000 Welsh speakers in England which are over a quarter of the number who live in Wales. At least one of them must live in our village for he or she has translated our tourist information website into Welsh. Had it not been for the pandemic I would have spent a week or so of my annual holiday in Wales. COVID 19 has got in the way of that but if I can't have an actual holiday in Wales I can still have a virtual one and learn a bit of Welsh.
When I started learning with SSI Welsh I found that I had already picked up a little like "Araf" and "Canolfan" from motoring, "cyhoeddus" in the context of "llwybr" and "toiledau" from just wandering around, "cariad" from listening to mums talking to their children and even "Swyddfa batent" and "Swyddfa Eiddo Deallusol" from attending the hearing office to Newport. I think I should be able to manage more than "Bore da" on 8 Sept.
The first Wales Tech Week starts today and continues until 17 July. It is described on its website as a "unique virtual festival of webinars, workshops and digital events will showcase the breadth, strength and diversity of Wales' thriving technology industry."
There is a wide choice of topics from artificial intelligence to virtual reality. Most of the titles are in English but there are a number in Welsh as well as English. There are contributions from Bangor, Cardiff and other research universities as well as from business and local communities,
I have registered for Strategic IP for an Electronic and Software Driven World to be given by Elliott Davies of Wynne-Jones IP between 09:00 and 09:45 tomorrow, I shall let you know how Elliott's talk goes. If I attend any others I shall report on those too.
Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert On Tuesday 30 June 2020 I gave a talk over Zoom for the Menai Science Park Enterprise Hub entitled Understanding Intellectual Property. I spoke for just over 30 minutes and then answered questions from the audience. I made 42 slides which Emily Roberts distributed to attendees after my talk. I have also uploaded them to Slideshare. As there is a limit to what a person who did not attend the talk can learn from a set of slides, I have summarized my talk in this article.
Intellectual property is the collective term for the bundle of laws that protect investment in branding,design, technology and creativity. Examples of those laws include patents for inventions and copyright for architecture, drawings, films, novels, plays and sound recordings. They reflect a bargain that the public makes with those engaged in creating and disseminating new products and services. In exchange for sharing their creativity and innovation with the public, the public grants them monopolies or exclusive rights that offer them opportunities to recoup their investment and perhaps a little bit more.
Those monopolies and exclusive rights can be very valuable, As the Intellectual Property Office explains in its animation IP BASICS: Is Intellectual Property important to my business?. they can be used to exploit a competitve advantage. They can also make money even when their owner is not making or selling anything because they may be licensed for periodic payments known as "royalties" or assigned for one-off payments.
On the other hand, as the animation also explains, intellectual property can be an existential threat to a business. That is because the remedies and penalties for intellectual property infringement are draconian. Another reason to take account of intellectual property.
There are often different ways of protecting an intellectual asset. For instance, the inventor of a new product may tell the world how to make or use his or her invention in return for a patent. Alternatively, he or she may keep it under wraps and require his or her employees to keep it secret. Not a bad option for a product that cannot easily be reverse-engineered such as a beverage. That is how Coca Cola has kept its recipe secret since the end of the 19th century and the monks of Chartreuse the recipe for their liqueur for centuries, But a drug company with a new medicine in competition with other major pharmaceutical companies around the world will probably want a patent in each of its main markets.
When applying for a patent it is a good idea to instruct a patent attorney. They can make the necessary searches and draft the application in such a way as to maximize protection but minimize the risk of a challenge to the patent's validity. The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys has produced a very good video entitled Why do I need a Patent Attorney?which shows how patent attorneys work. Many patent attorneys are also trade mark attorneys or work in partnership with trade mark attorneys. If a business owner wants to register a trade mark or design he or she would be well advised to consider a trade mark attorney, The Chartered Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys publishes a useful video on trade mark attorneys entitled How to navigate Intellectual Property Law.
I am often asked how much it costs to register a patent, trade mark or registered design. The answer depends on how much work the attorney has to do. There are also office fees and sometimes other costs such as translations or disbursements for other professionals such as barristers. Typically, a patent for the UK can cost anything up to £5,000 or even more if there are objections and hearings. Research published by the European Patent Office some years ago calculated that a 10 page patent with drawings for France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK renewed for up to 10 years could cost €30,000. A patent covering all those countries plus China, India, Japan, South Korea and the USA could easily amount to £100,000. Trade marks and registered designs are a lot cheaper. Well under £1,000 for a UK trade mark including searches, drafting a specification and correspondence with the examiner or third parties and even less for a design registration as there is no substantive examination.
Although some IP infringements are criminal offences, primary responsibility for enforcing IP rights lies with the IP owner. In Wales and England actions for IP infringement have to be brought in the Intellectual Property List of the Business and Property Courts of England and Wales. Claims for damages for patent or registered design infringement exceeding £500,000 are brought in the Patents Court which sits in the Rolls Building in London. Claims for infringements of other IP rights have to be brought in the Chancery Division of the High Court or a County Court hearing centre where there is also a Chancery district registry. The costs of litigating in Patents Court or the Chancery Division can be massive. Assessments of over £1 million are not uncommon. Claims under £500,000 can be brought in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court where recoverable costs are limited to £50,000. There is a small claims track for claims under £10,000 where the recoverable costs are limited to a few hundred pounds. The Intellectual Property Office offers a cost-effective mediation service and examiners' opinions on patent validity and infringement disputes. Both the World Intellectual Property Organization and Nominet provide a cost-effective service for resolving domain name disputes.
Intellectual property claims are often excluded from legal liability insurance policies but there are a few brokers who specialize in IP insurance. Ian Wishart of Sybaris Special Risks gave a talk on the cover that are available for start-ups and SMEs when he visited M-SParc last September. Other sources of funding are members of the Association of Litigation Funders. In the USA and some other countries, it is possible to instruct lawyers on the understanding that they will be paid only if their client wins and that their fee will be a share of any damages that may be awarded.
The following websites provide further information on intellectual property the last two of which are my own:
There is a network of Business and Intellectual Property Centres based which offer a wide range of services and resources onsite and online. The largest of those centres is at the British Library in London. The British Library Business & IP Centre video provides a good introduction to the Centre's services. Anyone can join its Linkedin and Facebook groups and subscribe to its mailing lists but it is necessary to obtain a British Library reader's ticket to use its onsite services. The nearest Business and IP Centre to Anglesey is Liverpool Central Library and its services are described in the Business and IP Centre Liverpool video.
I finished by mentioning that the Menai Science Park is gathering the following network of professional advisors who can advise and assist its tenants and other businesses and creative or innovative individuals in Northwest Wales:
The first question I was asked after my talk was how to protect computer programs. I replied that copyright was the main way of preventing copying of the code itself and perhaps also features of a program such as its system, sequence and organization. Secret information relating to the design and development of the program such as comments in the source code might be protected from unauthorized use or disclosure by the law of confidence or under the Trade Secrets Directive. Although computer programs are not patentable as such it is sometimes possible to obtain a patent for a software-implemented invention. The next question was on how to protect a new travel service. I explained that services were the most difficult type of innovation to protect. A service provider could register his or her brand as a trade mark and copyright prevented copying of manuals, advertisements and other literature. Business information such as customers' names and addresses might be protected by the law of confidence and the Trade Secrets Directive. However, the basic idea of the service could not be monopolized. Anyone could offer a competing service so long as they did not lead the public to believe that their services were the same as the original service provider's. My third question was whether copyright prevented copying of products. I replied that copyright was once an indirect way of protecting new product designs but that had been abolished by the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. Original designs - that is to say the shape and configuration of articles - are now protected by a new IP right called unregistered design right. The term of protection was much shorter: 15 years if nothing is made to the design or 10 years from the date of first marketing if articles were made to the design. In the last 5 years, anyone including an infringer could apply as of right for a licence to make the item.
The last question was on what to do if an infringer reposts a photo on his website without permission. I said that most actions in the Small Claims Track were claims of that kind (see Jane Lambert Damages Awards in the Small Claims Track17 June 2020 NIPC Law). The court could grant injunctions and award up to £10,000 in damages. It was not always necessary to instruct a lawyer for a small claim and the costs that could be awarded against an unsuccessful party were limited to issue fees, loss of earnings and travel expenses. Hearings of the Small Claims Track now took place in Business and Property Courts hearing centres outside London such as Liverpool and Cardiff.
Anyone wishing to discuss this topic should call my clerk Stephen Somerville on +44(0)7986 948267 or send me a message through my contact page.
On 29 Nov 2019, I visited the Menai Science Park (M-SParc) to talk \about IP searches and understanding patent specifications. In addition to our usual audience of local artists, business owners, entrepreneurs, inventors, makers and their professional advisers, we welcomed some graduate and undergraduate students from Bangor Law School. The audience was so large that we had to move the talk from the boardroom to the training room. You will find a copy of my presentation at IP Database Searches and Understanding Specifications30 Nov 2020.
After my talk, I held my usual clinic for local businesses and then drove across the Britannia Bridge to the Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre to watch Ballet Cymru's triple bill which I reviewed in Ballet Cymru - Even Better than Last Year 6 Dec 2019 Terpsichore. Before the show, I watched a performance by local schoolchildren in the foyer of the Pontio Centre. I wrote:
"Members of the company had introduced ballet to the students of a local primary school who presented an impressive curtain-raiser in the theatre's foyer. Alex Hallas, who tutored the children, told me that many including several boys had been inspired to take up ballet seriously. Throughout my life, I have found ballet to be an excellent mental as well as physical exercise. Probably I could not do my job well without it."
Yesterday, Ballet Cymru released a film of their work with those children which I have embedded above.
Like M-SParc, the Pontio Centre is an initiative of Bangor University and they complement each other. While the science park provides facilities for new knowledge-based businesses the Pontio is a venue for the performing arts. Both are essential for the economic and social regeneration of Northwest Wales. The new businesses in or clustering around M-SParc already provide employment for the region's graduates and young professionals. The arts will nourish their minds and spirits.
As I noted in IP and Dance 30 May 2019, intellectual property is important to the performing arts as it is is to science and technology. While patents, trade secrecy, unregistered design right and copyright protect investment in research and development, copyright protects the work of artists, choreographers, composers, costume and set designers, dramatists, dramaturges and librettists and rights in performances the work of actors, ballerinas, musicians and singers.
Anyone wishing to discuss this article or any of the topics mentioned it should call my clerk Stephen on 07986 948267 or send me a message through my contact page. I shall gladly respond by phone, VoIP or email.
On 27 April 2020, the Menai Science Park (M-SParc) celebrated World Intellectual Property Day 2020 with a webinar on green innovation. We focused on two aspects of that theme: the online market place for green technologies operated by the World Intellectual Property Organization (the UN agency for intellectual property) known as WIPO Green and the accelerated procedure for examining applications for environmentally friendly inventions known as the green channel. Just over two weeks later M-SParc presented another webinar entitled Egni2020 that discussed recent developments in the energy sector. That webinar dovetailed perfectly with ours because the technologies that were discussed in EGNI2020 were exactly the sort that we had in mind when we talked about green innovation on World IP Day.
I had already introduced the WIPO Green online market in Anglesey to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day with Talks on Protecting and Exploiting Green Innovation at M-SParc5 March 2020 and I gave more details in World Intellectual Property Day – April 26, 2020: Innovate for a Green Futureon 2 March 2020 in NIPC News. I also mentioned it in my chairperson's presentation at the World IP Day webinar. Amy Dietterich, Director, Global Challenges Division of the WIPO has published a comprehensive article on the topic in the March 2020 edition of the WIPO Magazine entitled WIPO GREEN: supporting green innovation and technology transfer.
WIPO Green offers unparalleled opportunities for investment, joint ventures, licensing and marketing throughout the world and inclusion in the database which Ms Dietterich describes as the backbone of the WIPO Green platform is absolutely free. It could have been tailor-made for businesses in Wales and other parts of the UK yet no Welsh companies and only one British company has taken advantage of the resource. I am not sure why that is the case but my guess is that most accountants, bankers, business advisors, consultants and other professionals are unaware of it.
The EGNI2020 webinar included short presentations from:
It seems likely that inventions for harnessing the wind, waves and tides, decommissioning nuclear reactors and sites and hydrogen fuel cell propulsion would qualify for the Intellectual Property Office's green channel and similar schemes offered by other patent offices. Anyone working in those technologies who requires initial advice on patentability, searching or sn introduction to a patent attorney is welcome to contact at any time me using the Initial Advice and Signposting form at the end of Online Support for Businesses in Wales. No fees will be charged for using that service.
Anyone wishing to discuss this article or any of the topics mentioned in it contact me through my message page. I am happy too reply by phone, email or Zoom.
