In a recent interview published on CrowdCube, Andrew White (Managing Associate at Mathys & Squire) discusses the value of IP with our client, Powervault.

Powervault, who manufacture home electricity storage systems, have worked with the firm since 2013 to secure patent protection, and have raised multiple rounds of funding via Crowdcube since 2014.

In this article they discuss why their intellectual property is important, as well as the reasons behind their decision to protect their patents. Notably, they mention that before each crowdfunding exercise, Crowdcude would thoroughly review all aspects of their business, including their IP portfolio.

To read the full article please click here.

We’re delighted to invite you to this briefing which promises to be an informative session working with Deloitte, Mathys & Squire and the Business Growth Hub, focusing on helping you to get the most out of your innovations.

We will walk through the intellectual property (IP) lifecycle, from idea generation to commercialisation. The aim of the briefing session will be to give you the practical tools to maximise the value you can derive from your IP throughout this lifecycle, and to proactively safeguard your IP, whilst avoiding some of the common pitfalls.

This is the briefing for you if you are:

• Perplexed by the various tax incentives and reliefs available to you throughout your IP lifecycle, and keen to find out about ways that you can turn your innovations into cashback
• Keen to implement an IP strategy that is tailored to your  current and future commercial aims whilst avoiding the common pitfalls associated with the patenting process
• Interested to find out more about the type of funding and help available to you throughout your innovative journey

Following the session delivered by experts from Deloitte, Mathys & Squire and the Business Growth Hub, you will be able to register your interest for an individual 30-minute session with a member of the briefing panel. There will also be plenty of time following the briefing for a Q&A session.

To register for the event please click here. 

In fact, since the result of the UK’s referendum on EU membership, there has been no let-up in the large number of European patent applications filed by British attorneys.

The resistance of the European patent system to the effects of Brexit is good news for both the UK and for those around the world who want to use British legal expertise to protect their intellectual property in Europe.

It is positive for the UK because along with trade mark attorneys, the UK’s patent attorneys contribute more than £1bn to the British economy. The majority of this comes from foreign companies choosing to use British representation.

In fact, of the 40,000 European patent applications filed each year by the UK’s European patent attorneys, nearly 90% are for clients from overseas.

This shows the high regard the rest of the world has for the UK legal sector. It also means that, while UK chartered patent attorneys form a fifth of all European patent attorneys practising today, they file a third of all European patent applications.

So, while many aspects of UK and European law will be affected by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, patent work will continue unchanged. UK patent attorneys will continue to represent domestic and overseas clients before the European Patent Office in exactly the same way as they do now.

Good news for Britain. Good news for businesses worldwide.

To watch the animated video produced by CIPA click here.

Benoît Battistelli, President of the European Patent Office, has made a statement that Brexit will have no effect on UK membership of the European Patent Organisation, and that European patent attorneys based in the UK will continue to be able to represent applicants before the EPO after the UK leaves the European Union. 

To read the EPO president’s statement please click here. 

Season’s Greetings from the team at Mathys & Squire!

For the design of this Christmas card, we ran a competition at Grange Primary school. We received some fantastic entries and the winning design is shown in our Christmas card below! 

Lego says it has won a landmark copyright case in China against rival products almost identical to its famous coloured toy bricks.

As reported in a BBC news story this week which you can read here paves the way for other international companies to protect their brands and products from imitation goods in China.

The Shantou Intermediate People’s Court made the ruling, which also found that the manufacture and sale of the infringing products constituted acts of unfair competition. Lego said this was the first time it has filed and won an anti-unfair competition case against imitators in China. The decisions came into effect in November.

Peter Thorslund Kjær, vice president of legal affairs at Lego, said: “We are pleased with the ruling by the Shantou Intermediate People’s Court, which we see as a strong indication of the continued focus on proper IP protection and enforcement by the Chinese courts and responsible authorities.”

For more information about protecting your brand internationally, please visit our trade mark page.

The UK Parliament has advised that the House of Commons approved the draft Unified Patent Court (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2017 yesterday. This draft Order must also be approved by the House of Lords then followed by the Privy Council, it will be debated by the House of Lords’ Grand Committee later this week.

For more information on the UPC please contact Caroline Warren on [email protected].

In the first of the new autumn Budget cycles, Chancellor Phillip Hammond laid out a “steady as she goes” Budget. There were some big announcements for those looking to get onto the housing ladder as well as much needed changes to the universal credit scheme.

There were also some welcome changes to R&D, Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs). There are, however, a number of measures that were announced that are subject to debate and change with over 20 consultations and several changes scheduled for release in 2018.

Other areas we see as a welcome boost from the Chancellor are:

• Increase in R&D relief – From January 1, the rate of R&D expenditure credit will increase from 11% to 12%, this will mostly affect larger companies. The government is also planning on introducing an advance clearing system for R&D claims.
• VAT threshold to remain at £85,000 for the next two years. This will be welcome news to small businesses. However, those close to the threshold should monitor sales closely to ensure they register for VAT and apply on time so no penalties are incurred.
• £500m for 5G mobile networks, fibre broadband and investment in AI. However, this is not necessarily new funding and is part of the £740m investment which was announced in the Spring 2017 Budget but nevertheless shows that the UK is investing in the future of technology.
• £540m to support the growth of electric cars, including installing more charging points. This will be welcome news to our client ZapGo, who was recently in the news with the launch of their supercapacitor battery which is set to revolutionise not only the automotive industry but how appliances are charged in the home.
• Changes to the sale of diesel cars. Cars that do not meet latest emission standards will face a one-off tax increase in April. We know that manufacturers are investing heavily in the latest low emission technology and one of our very own clients, Green Lizard, has developed and launched an innovative new process which uses DMC to eliminate 80 to 90% of exhaust particles from conventional diesel engines. Read more about their technology here.

With the Brexit process now eight months in, we weren’t expecting too many rabbits out of the hat and with the OBR downgrading 2017 UK growth to 1.5% from the original prediction of 2%, there was not much wriggle room for big announcements.

The Budget aside, we are seeing some UK firms failing to take basic steps to protect and exploit their own intellectual property.  In our recent survey in conjunction with the Manufacturing Technologies Association (MTA) we estimate the total amount lost thanks to UK manufacturing industry’s basic IP failures to be in the “millions”.

We as a firm urge the UK government to increase awareness that IP is an essential element to any business and if not protected or exploited effectively can be disastrous for a growing, entrepreneurial company. Basic, effective IP protection can be achieved easily and cheaply. For a company to fail to do so represents a loss of immediate value and puts future opportunities at risk. Read our survey here.

Food production is the biggest industry in the world and now, more than ever, the food technology sector is under immense pressure to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding population, both in population and waistline. Coupled to this need for improved efficiency is the requirement for healthier products that satisfy customer trends and government health policies.

The food industry is responding by providing cleaner and less wasteful processes as well as introducing ‘lite’ products such as sugar-free drinks, fat-free spreads, and low-salt alternatives. However, there is a balance between meeting these goals and achieving acceptable product taste and texture. Where such balance is met, an Intellectual Property (IP) opportunity is often missed.

In this interactive presentation, Mathys & Squire and industry experts discuss striking the right balance between taste, sugar, marketing, and product innovation, and the importance of protecting intellectual property in this highly competitive technical field.

This event will be ideal for CEO’s, NPD Managers, Category Managers, CTO’s, and those working in R&D in the food and beverage sector.

Please RSVP to Victoria Archdeacon by 6^th December – [email protected]

Speakers include:

• Jamie Methuen, Senior Business Development Manager, Public Health England
• Professor Martin Atkins, CEO, Green Lizard Technologies
• Philip Banfield, Founder and Managing Director, VentureField
• Nimisha Raja, Founder, Nim’s Fruit Crisps
• James Read, Founder, Giant Peach
• Rachel Rowntree, Managing Director, Wide Eyed Owl
• Mathys & Squire – Martin MacLean, David Hobson, Dani Kramer, Daniel Ramos, Chris Hamer

Date: Wednesday 13^th December

Time: 17.00 registration, 17.30 – 19.30 interactive seminar, 19.30 – 20.30 drinks and networking 

The food industry is currently facing challenges from many angles, including catering to new consumer trends, which include the increased popularity of vegetarianism, veganism, and the desire for greater availability of “free from” foods, in addition to meeting the requirements of new government guidelines relating to consumer health.

For example, Public Health England (PHE) has published new guidelines regarding sugar reduction in the food industry, aiming at reducing the amount of sugar in children’s food by 20% by 2020, with a 5% reduction in the first year. This presents a significant challenge for those in the food industry to comply with these guidelines whilst meeting consumer expectations relating to taste, colour and texture.

One organisation taking this challenge head-on is Lucozade Ribena Suntory (LRS), a UK soft drinks manufacturer, which has announced that it aims to reduce the sugar content of all of its existing and new beverages to less than 4.5g per 100 ml (compared to previous 10 to 11g per 100 ml). To date LRS has managed to remove a staggering 25,500 tons of sugar and 98 billion calories from the company’s annual drinks production and states that this dramatic change has not affected the taste of the soft drinks produced.

So how are manufacturers meeting these new government lead and consumer driven targets?

One main method of lowering sugars in food is to replace at least some of the sugar present with sweeteners. However, the incorporation of higher amounts of sweeteners can lead to the presence of an off-taste/bitter taste. It is known that the presence of artificial sweeteners within food products not only stimulates the human sweet taste receptors but also activates bitter taste receptors (TAS2Rs), causing this unpleasant “off-taste”. In order to overcome this disadvantage, the food industry has often turned to the use of a combination of sweeteners. Combinations of saccharin and cyclamate are known to produce higher sweetness levels with reduced bitter off-taste, however, the reasons as to why this effect is achieved by this specific combination were unknown, leaving those in the food industry to resort to a trial and error approach when formulating new/and or improved combinations of sweeteners. 

Research by Behrens et al. has now shown that the combination of non-caloric sweetener cyclamate inhibits the two bitter taste receptors, TAS2R31 and TAS2R43, stimulated by saccharin and, in turn, saccharin suppresses the response of the human bitter taste receptor, TAS2R1, to cyclamate. Thus, it is this mutual suppression of bitter taste receptors which leads to the “higher sweetness levels with reduced bitter off-taste” observed.

Furthermore, the results of Behrens et al. indicate that “mixtures of two or more bitter compounds could exhibit lower overall bitterness as a result of inhibition between the substances”.

Whilst the current challenges faced by those in the food industry may have once seemed insurmountable, it is clear that current research, such as that discussed above, is helping to provide new insights into the issues faced. This can, in turn, lead the way to new and inventive methods of tackling these challenges. However, in a competitive industry where the total consumer expenditure on food, drink at catering in 2016 was around £206 billion, it is more vital than ever for companies to protect their innovations to prevent the possibility of reducing their market share.

In Mathys & Squire, our specialist food technology team works with clients to help identify, protect and commercialise their food intellectual property (IP), whether through identifying relevant chemical compounds in new food products, how food is manufactured or through packaging design and processes.

To find out more on how the Mathys & Squire’s food technology team can help your business, contact Laura Clews on [email protected] 

For further information regarding the research by Behrens et al. please see the following article.

Encouraging acknowledgement from Rob Law (Trunki CEO and founder) of the importance of filing registered designs with “Trunki [now filing] a registered design for just about everything”, as reported here following a Design Week panel discussion attended by Mathys & Squire.

This follows the well-documented 2016 Supreme Court design infringement action brought by Trunki, which highlighted the importance of getting registered designs right. When used correctly, registered designs are an easy, effective and relatively inexpensive way of securing monopoly protection for designs.

For more information on designs and how Mathys & Squire can help you with protecting and commercialising your designs, please click here.