FREE RESOURCES and next steps towards A STRATEGIC APPROACH

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Many of our clients are fairly sophisticated in IP matters and often come to us after experience of IP elsewhere and based on personal recommendations for us to do things a bit more efficiently and strategically.  However we are very happy to help brand new clients, large or small, taking early steps on the IP journey and who frankly may not be so sure what they should do next.

You can of course just pick up the phone or schedule a video call and tell us what your immediate issue is. However, we really like to form a genuine partnership with our clients and work with them strategically from the outset.  That often means we will ask questions beyond the issue that prompted you to talk to someone like us.  In our view, a different commercial background may suggest a different answer to seemingly the same technical question.  Put another way, we don't like to take money from you for performing an IP action which may not make the best sense in your overall business context.

For our established clients we perform regular updates on their IP status and review their strategy as part of what we do.  We would encourage all of our clients to start thinking in this way even when they do not have, or do not think they have, much IP.

If you have been in business for a while and have not thought seriously about IP, you may be interested to know we perform one-off audits on IP.  The good news is that, at least for UK clients, you can often get a grant so you only pay £500 towards several thousand pounds worth of professional advice catching up with overdue IP issues affecting your business.  We can advise on how to apply (normally successfully) for these grants.

Getting money from the UK government to help your on your IP journey is worth considering.  However, wherever you are in the world, whether your IP journey is at an early stage or you think it may not have been approached sufficiently strategically, or it simply might benefit from a review or refresh, you can do a lot to start to focus issues yourself for free.

We prefer to educate our clients about IP as we go rather than mystify what we do.  Our aim is to empower our clients with internal knowledge about IP so our conversations can become more efficient and strategic (and fun).  We prefer to add value and expertise rather than charging for things clients could with a little help sensibly do or at least assist with themselves.

We also don't like to reinvent the wheel.  The World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) has useful information for SMEs and a great free IP audit tool on their website and this is a great place to get thinking on the right lines.  https://www.wipo.int/sme/en/ip_audit/

On the subject of reinventing the wheel, patents need to be new.  Patent searching is a complex specialist subject and there are various ways of approaching it.  However, if you are curious about what patents in your area look like and the sort of information we will need to put in one, or want to do a quick free search for "prior art" you can get started here. https://worldwide.espacenet.com/

Hopefully, this has got you thinking a little more about your IP issues in context.  Feel free to schedule a call when you are ready to talk to us about your IP.  We usually offer a free initial consultation and we will tell you frankly if we do not think we are the right people to help you.