World Intellectual Property Day is an international festival of creativity and innovation on or around 26 April each year. It commemorates the entry into force of the Convention that established the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO"), Every year the festival, focuses on a different theme. The theme for 2025 is "IP and Music: Feel the Beat of IP". According to the WIPO, this year’s World IP Day invites us to explore how IP rights and innovation policies empower creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs to bring fresh ideas to the music industry, safeguarding the work of songwriters, composers, performers, and all those who shape the music that moves us.
Music is an art form in which Wales excels in every genre and at every level. The Menai Science Park ("M-SParc") has participated in every World IP Day celebration since 2019. Every year it has held lunchtime seminars on the theme as well as other initiatives to benefit businesses and individuals in Northwest Wales. M-SParc already participates in Gogledd Creadigol which is a network for the creative industries including music in North Wales.
The science park was established by Bangor University which also set up the Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre an important music venue for Northwest Wales. On 10 Jan 2025 for example it will host the Welsh National Opera's New Year's Celebration in its Bryn Terfel Theatre. On 18 Jan 2025, it will stage Gig Teuluwith Meinir Gwilym, Elin Fflur and Buddug in the same auditorium. Ballet Cymru has performed Tirto the music of Cerys Matthews in the Pontio. Catrin Finch, whose photo appears above, also wrote the score for the company's Celtic Concerto.
In previous years, M-SParc has invited me to propose a programme for the lunchtime seminar and also to chair it. Should the science park do so again, I shall invite composers, songwriters and performers from Wales and leading practitioners on copyright,rights in performances and artificial intelligence from around the world to participate. I would also try to involve the Pontio and Gogledd Creadigol in the celebrations.
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Gogledd Creadigol or Creative North Wales describes itself on its Facebook page as "a network for the creative digital industries in North Wales". Its aim is to encourage networking and collaboration between the digital creative companies and further and higher education institutions in order to secure a prosperous future for the industry in North Wales.
Gogledd Creadigol's most recent meeting took place on the new Bangor campus of Coleg Menai on the Parc Menai business park. It began with a tour of the campus. Some idea of its impressive educational and skills training facilities can be gained from the above video and the photos on Gogledd Creadigol's Facebook page. The new Bangor campus forms part of Grŵp Llandrillo Menai which is an amalgamation of Coleg Llandrillo, Coleg Menai and Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor. The merged establishment is enormous employing 2,000 staff and teaching 21,000 students in Anglesey, Conwy, Denbighshire and Gwynedd.
After an introduction from the Chair and an update from Tom Burke there were presentations from the Federation of Small Businesses, North Wales Regional Skills Partnership, Supertemps and Cymru Creadigol. The FSB promoted The Power of Creativity, a study of the creative industries in Wales which it had published on 24 Oct 2024. The speaker from the Skills Partnership spoke about training in the creative sector. One slide which stuck in my mind showed that a higher proportion of qualified persons in the creative sector in Anglesey and Gwynedd than those in Northeast Wales. The speaker attributed that to a longer commute to the English border. I put it to her that it was also consistent with the creation of new jobs and business opportunities at M-SParc. She did not disagree.
According to the FSB the turnover of the creative industries in Wales was £3.8 billion in 2022 contributing 5.3% to the nation's GDP. Some 40% of the businesses in the sector are one-person concerns and 80% of those industries employ between 1 and 9 people. The legal protection of brands, designs and works of art or literature is crucial to the success of those businesses.
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Last Monday I chaired the fourth Wales Enterprise Day seminar at the Menai Science Park ("M-SParc"). It was filmed by Iwan Pitts and readers can watch the whole proceedings on YouTube. Wales Enterprise Day was the brainchild of Emily Roberts. She intended it to be a counterweight to World IP Day which M-SParc has celebrated every year since 2019, As World IP Daty takes place in Spring M-SParc focuses on start-ups on that day though it does not ignore scale-ups, In Autumn Wales Enterprise Day focuses on scale-ups but does not forget start-ups.
Our theme this year was Developing an IP Strategy and it was set out comprehensively but also comprehensibly by Antony Craggs of Shoosmiths. Antony spoke about IP Strategy and Enforcement just before lunch on the last day of the Cambridge IP Law Summer School at Downing College. Winning and holding an audience's attention in that slot is an uphill task but Antony had us sitting bolt-upright as he delivered his talk. I have heard nearly as many presentations on IP strategy and enforcement as I have had hot dinners but Antony's talk was exceptional. I booked him for Wales Enterprise Day before he even left the lecture hall.
Antony chose the same theme for his talk to M-SParc but he delivered it in a very different way, That was partly because it was given over the Internet and partly because he had a different audience. Most of the attendees at the Cambridge IP Law Summer School are lawyers. Some are trainee solicitors but most are assistant solicitors with a good knowledge and some practical experience of IP. Antony's audience on Monday consisted mainly of business owners. His talk was interactive and he used slido to encourage participation. He illustrated his talk by considering the business issues and decisions that would be taken by the founders of a new solar power company called "Folt". The reason for the spelling will be appreciated when it is remembered that "F" is pronounced "V" in Welsh. If anything Antony's presentation to M-SParc was even more impressive than the one that he gave at Cambridge. Readers can watch it all on the above video,
Though not exactly a start-up, MDF Recovery Ltd opened a new office at M-SParc in May of this year (see MDF Recovery expands presence with new office at M-Sparc, Anglesey7 May 2024), The office is led by Rob Elias who is Head of Business Development at the company. I first met Rob when he chaired a workshop on sustainable packaging that I addressed in January 2019 (see IP for the Welsh Food and Packaging Industries30 Jan 2019 NIPC News). He was also a guest speaker at M-SParc's World IP Day celebrations in 2020. Rob introduced us to his company's technology which extracts wood fibre from waste medium-density fibreboard so that it can be reconstituted into fresh blocks.
Tom Burke has founded several successful businesses and is also Digital Innovation Manager at M-SParc. His latest enterprise is Streams+ which promotes eSports. Tom told us about his pivot from video conferencing to eSports. He mentioned the first Welsh-speaking eSports event at the National Eisteddfod which he helped to organize and promote (see Emily Roberts Historic First: Welsh Language Esports Competition Debuts at National Eisteddfod7 Aug 2024 M-Sparc's website). He also said that the International Olympic Committee has organized an annual eSports Series and that the event was gaining popularity rapidly.
The last speaker was Emma Richards, Regional Policy Advisor at the IPO. Last year I quizzed her about the use of Welsh at the Intellectual Property Office. As there has definitely been some progress since then I introduced her as "the lady who can get things done" (see IPO's Welsh Language Website13 Nov 2024 NIPC Wales). Emma modestly disclaimed credit for the language progress but she introduced us to the IPO's YouTube channel and showed us the IP Basicsand attachés videos. Most importantly, she promised support to enable M-SParc to provide its tenants and local business community with the services available in the Business and IP Centres network in England, As a first step she has arranged for Gwenllian Owen, M-SParc's Commercialization and Innovation Officer, to attend the IPO's IP Masterclass and Gwenllian will be followed on that course shortly by Lois Bevan Shaw, Business Support & Project Development Manager at M-SParc.
This is a convenient point for me to express my gratitude to Gwenllian for all the work that she did to make the Wales Enterprise Day seminar happen. I suggested speakers, promoted the event in this publication and on social media and chaired the seminar on the day but Gwenllian did everything else which must have required a lot of work. I see from Gwenllian's LinkedIn page that she has recently marked her second anniversary with M-SParc. Her achievements at the science park have been considerable and I think she can fairly chalk up Monday's seminar as yet another resounding success.
Finally, I remind readers that Monday's seminar was not an isolated event. It was just one of several free services that Sean Thomas, Andrea Knox, Steve Livingston and I offer together with other IP professionals (see An IP Clinic for M-SParc25 Jan 2024 NIPC Wales). These will complement the Business and IP Centre services that Emma Richards referred to in her talk, Immediately after the seminar I was consulted by two young local inventors who are contemplating an interesting business venture, Anyone wishing to access those services can do so at any time by completing the attached form.
Anyone wishing to discuss this article may call me on +44 (0)20 7404 5252 during UK office hours or send me a message through my contact form.
As with the other funds, the British Business Bank has made the funding available and arranged with local fund managers to distribute it in the form of smaller loans, debt finance and equity investment. BCRS lends between £25,000 and £100,000. FW Capital offers debt finance between £100,000 and £2 million. The Foresight Group invests between £2 and £5 million in companies' share capital. Both the British Business Bank and the fund managers work with other lenders and investors in Wales. Such lenders include clearing and challenger banks, business angels and venture capitalists that do business in Wales. They in turn collaborate with local accountants, business advisors, law firms, patent and trade mark attorneys and others who advise and assist startups, scale-ups and other small businesses,
Business owners who are unsure how to approach the British Business Bank, a fund manager or any other lender or investor could do worse than book a free appointment in person or by video link with me or some other professional through our Initial Advice and Signposting service (see An IP Clinic for M-SParc
25 Jan 2024 NIPC Wales). If funding is offered there are bound to be legal issues some of which I can resolve. Other services such as drafting shareholders' agreements and patent prosecution can be done more efficiently by commercial solicitors such as Andrea Knox or patent attorneys like Sean Thomas.
Anyone wishing to discuss this article may call me on 020 7404 5252 during UK business hours or send me a message through my contact form.
"Visitors to the Intellectual Property Office’s home page and main navigation pages on GOV.UK will now see that these are bilingual, as the IPO completes the first phase of its programme of work to provide digital information and services in Welsh."
And so it does:
The first page to be translated partially is on trade marks: ~
Readers can learn more about the IPO's Welsh language commitment on Monday 18 Nov 2024 from Emma Richards who will be one of the speakers at the Menai Science Park's contribution to this year's Wales Enterprise Day celebrations. She will also have a lot of other topics to discuss as she is the Regional Policy Advisor to the IPO,
There are still a few places at the event online and at the venue, If you want to take part you can register here,
Anyone wishing to discuss this article may call me on +44 (0)20 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.
Wales Enterprise Day takes place on or around 18 Nov of every year. It grew out of the Menai Science Park's World Intellectual Property Day celebrations in 2021, The theme that year was "Taking your Ideas to Market". The topic was so large that the science park decided to hold two events, one focusing on startups on Word Intellectual Property Daty and another on scaleups in autumn. Emily Roberts suggested that the Autumn event should be called Wales Enterprise Day and the name stuck. Last year Aberinnovation and Tramshed joined our celebrations. This year we shall invite organizations, communities and individuals throughout Wales and beyond to take part in the day.
The main celebrations will be a hybrid online and in-person seminar on 18 Nov between 12:00 and 14:00. We have some star speakers such as Antony Craggsof Shoosmirths, Geraint McGrath of the Foresight Group, Tom Burke of Haia and Streams+ and I shall chair the event. Antony was one of the speakers at the Cambridge IP Law Summer School and he gave one of the best presentations on IP strategy and enforcement that I have ever heard. I signed him up to deliver a similar talk to Wales Enterprise Day before he left the conference hall. I met Geraint at the St David's Day Dinner at the Guildhall in March. He will discuss the Investment Fund for Wales and the massive opportunities it offers to Welsh businesses. Tom has co-founded several of M-SParc's tenant companies and he is now the Innovation Manager of M-SParc. We recently collaborated on the Convergent Content Scaler Programme on 25 Sept 2024 at which I discussed IP rights. We have invited several other distinguished speakers and everybody in the audience will be invited to participate.
For those who want to attend in person, the seminar will take place in M-SParc's boardroom. The event is free and readers can reserve their places by booking online. Anyone wishing to discuss this article may call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.
In Tallinn, I remarked that Estonia reminded me of Wales. Estonia has a highly developed digital infrastructure that has launched businesses likeSkype,Bolt, and Starship Technologies. Having spent Wednesday, 23 Oct 2024 at Digidol 24 - Wales's Digital Conference, Wales reminded me very much of Estonia. An impression was strengthened by the news that Llanbrynmair in Powys was the first telephone exchange area in the UK where every resident had access to ultrafast broadband (see Mari Grug 19 Oct 2024 BBC website).
Digidol 24 was the biggest event that I had ever attended at the Menai Science Park and one of the best. When I learned that it was to be hosted by Ameer Davies-Ranam I could not stay away. Ameer (or Sgrameer as he is known on YouTube) kept me amused and actually taught me a bit of Welsh during lockdown. I loved his pub, burger, Chinese, Christmas dinner, curry and other eatery reviews. He is such a good sport that he even tried Welsh folk dancing which includes a leap known as "the grasshopper". I introduced myself to Sgrameer during the coffee break and he seemed genuinely surprised and flattered to learn that he had a fan in Yorkshire.
Plenary sessions were held in the science park's atrium where the Tanio is located. There were breakout sessions in room G69 and the Ffiws, Boardroom and Collaboration rooms. I attended the plenary sessions but visited the Ffiws room for lunch and the exhibition stands in G69.
The first speaker in the atrium was Glyn Jones, Chief Digital Officer and Director of Analysis at the Welsh Government, who delivered an update on the Digital Strategy for Wales. He was followed by Avril Lewis, Managing Director at Technology Connected, who spoke about Wales Tech Week which takes place at the International Conference Centre in Newport between 24 and 26 Nov 2024. I had previously heard her at the Digital Wales event at the Welsh Government's office in London on 12 Sept 2023 (see Reflections on Wales Innovation Week in London on 20 Sept 2023).
One of the most interesting presentations of the day was an introduction to Glu by Mike Hawkes of CapVentis. Dr Hawkes had previously spoken at Wales Enterprise Day in 2023. Glu appears to be a comprehensive suite of business applications built around a single-core GluFoundation. I listened very carefully to his talk and discussed it with him over lunch afterwards. As far as I could understand it, the technical advance lay in the connection and manipulation of data in different formats. The "Our Glu Journey" segment at the end of the Glu page on the CapVentis website provides further information. If my understanding is correct, this technology could be of immense commercial value.
Another fascinating presentation was delivered by Paul Kinlan of Google. He discussed the history of the development of the Chrome browser and operating system and Google's plans for its future development. I encountered him on the way to lunch and asked him what if anything could be done to improve the interoperability of files created by Microsoft software on Chrome and vice versa. I remarked that it is possible to run Office 365 pm a Chromebook but not very convenient. I got the impression that the difficulties were more commercial than technical.
After lunch, Llion Jones delivered an online presentation on artificial intelligence from Tokyo. He is one of the authors of Attention is All You Needwhich proposed a simple network architecture called "the Transformer" based solely on attention mechanisms. According to the Eventbrite card, the Transformer became the basis of ChatGPT. Mr Jones is now working for Sakana AI which describes itself on https://sakana.ai/seed-round/ as a new AI research company based in Tokyo. It aims to develop transformative AI that will lead to the next paradigm. The main focus of its research and development of new kinds of foundation models will be based on nature-inspired intelligence. The company's name is Sakana (さかな) which means "fish" in Japanese. It is meant to invoke the idea of a school of fish coming together and forming a coherent entity from simple rules.
"The unlicensed use of creatiuve works for training generative AI is a major unjust threat to the livelihood of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted"
I asked Mr Jones whether he agreed that there was a distinction to be drawn between creativity and intelligence. To my surprise, he replied that there wasn't. I responded that they are completely different mental processes, the former being an exercise in understanding and the latter an inspiration of the spirit. My view is that authors like Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian Rankin have nothing to worry about. A machine may be great at creating elevator music but will never produce a work that stands comparison with Chopin.
A highlight of the day was an unscheduled session of short presentations by three of M-SParc's tenants in the atrium. One of the speakers was Tomos Owen who co-founded Pelly. That is an app that helps football clubs make recruitment and other decisions. This is another product that has been developed in the science park and has considerable commercial potential.
The last of the plenary speakers was Susi Marston who discussed the digital infrastructure that is soon to be rolled out in Wales. She promised very similar services to those that are available in Estonia including tariff-free voice calls and very fast broadband. BT had a stand in the atrium which I visited during one of the breaks. There I learned about the 5G mobile network that the company is installing. I was told by one of Ms Marston's colleagues that there is an excellent signal at the summit of Yr Wyddfa and that Northern Ireland has the most advanced fibre network in the UK.
Breakout sessions that I would have attended had it been possible to be in two places at once included
Huw Watkins and Iqbal Bedi on Technology Options to Improve SME Performance - Examples from North Wales and the BT Connectivity Roadshow in the Ffiws room,
Senedd member Rhin ap Iorwerth's reflections on the Digital Strategy, the panel discussion on smart buildings and decarbonization and the Federation of Small Businesses' Creative Report in the Boardroom, and
Business Wales's workshops in the Collaboration Room.
I visited as many of the stands as I could. I was particularly glad to make contact with Ambition North Wales which brings together the region's local authorities and its universities and to renew my connection with Gogledd Creadigol.
One of the reasons for Estonia's success in establishing and growing new businesses is that it has a highly skilled workforce. In my article on Estonia, I explained that that was because it has an excellent education system and that its kids regularly outscore children from other countries in the OECD PISA tests. However, Welsh schoolchildren are not far behind and one of M-SParc's most important activities is Club Sparci. It was encouraging to see that the last event of the day was a meeting of Club Sparci where the kids would learn about Raspberry Pi.
Anybody wishing to discuss this article may call me on 020 7404 5252 during UK office hours or send me a message through my contact form.
