IP TRAINING

Why is Intellectual Property training invaluable to both businesses and their people…

The world of intellectual property can be pretty complex and impenetrable if it’s not your area of expertise. However, understanding why it matters to your business, the benefits of protecting it and the risks associated with not doing so are really important – which is why we set up our IP Untangled training programme.

It’s not a death-by-PowerPoint session, nor a day-long course where we try and turn attendees into IP experts.

Rather, it’s a one or two-hour round-the-table introduction to IP, covering the four main headline areas of patents, trade marks, designs and copyright.

IP training for business

We explore what we mean by IP, what needs to be considered when protecting a product and offer an overview of patents. We explain the potential tax savings to be secured through R&D tax credits, and how you could reduce your corporation tax by up to 50% with something called Patent Box.

We also review Registered Designs and ask whether they offer value for money, and what you need to consider when it comes to protecting intellectual property abroad.

These sessions can be adapted to reflect the level of knowledge among attendees, and we include time for questions so we can address any particular concerns or areas of interest. We try and make the training as relevant as possible for delegates.

Why are we running this training?

Our experience shows that most people working within companies often don’t really think about IP (apart from those tasked with it). They might have some inkling, but they very rarely actually understand what it’s all about and why they should be looking out for it. All too often it’s something that doesn’t appear on their radar until their innovation is on the market!

We get a lot of people coming to us for help at this stage as they realise that perhaps they should have protected their product.

Our IP Untangled sessions are designed to help you avoid this and other pitfalls – we emphasise the importance of having some internal processes in place, how pro forma invention evaluation forms can help, and the importance of ensuring that your designers, engineers and business teams all understand why thinking about your IP really matters.

Adapted for you

Of course, some companies will be more IP savvy and we often provide training for other non-IP attorney firms. In this case we can adapt the training to focus on more detailed issues, such as infringement searches or analysis, how to read a patent and how to analyse it, and how to conduct pre-patent searches to determine what’s already out there.

The tailored approach means we can help both companies without IP experience and those who have in-house legal support but lack IP expertise. Our aim is to make the training fit the needs and knowledge of our customers.