REPORT: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
40 INSIDER March 2020 http://www.insider.co.uk
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murgitroyd.commiddle of running a business see it?
Stark says: “One of the challenges
with IP is that it can sit with different
people in a business. We see that with
our client engagement: it might be
a head of engineering, it might be a
head of technology. Protecting the IP
is unlikely to be the full part of their
role. You do get different focuses in
different businesses around IP. Where
we probably see an opportunity is
around being more commercial in
our advice, speaking to the whole
board, raising their awareness of IP as
an asset and understanding its value
as an asset... and then it becomes
more strategic.
“That’s maybe slightly different
from the discussions we can have at
different layers of the business where
it’s more about protecting the IP
and the mechanisms of protecting
it – how much is it going to cost?
Which countries and which elements
of the brand should be protected? At
different levels of the businesses there
are different discussions.”
Another trend in the area is that
in addition to patents of products
and services, there is a greater use
of trade secrets. There has been
recent European legislation on which
put more structure around how
businesses can protect trade secrets.
Stark says: “For many businesses
the knowhow which is protected by
the trade secret is important. One
of the downsides of patent is that
you have to make a full disclosure of
your technology in exchange for the
monopoly and the exclusion right
that you get, and sometimes that is
not what a company wants to do.
“For example, AG Barr with the
Irn-Bru recipe or Coca Cola, if they
had tried to patent that they would
have had to disclose the recipe and
the ingredients and of course that
is a closely-held secret. That is one
example of industry’s processes of
manufacture, how to approach things
- they can be patented but we also
see a focus round trade secrets and
that’s a good way of protecting them
in terms of trying to restrict the scope
of knowledge of these processes.
The downside is that if somebody
independently comes up with the
same process, then you can’t enforce
a trade secret against them, whereas
with a patent you could.”
He says there is a strategy to
approaching the whole area. “With
all IP strategies, the strongest – just
like an investment portfolio – is to
diversify. Diversifying your rights
is important, so is having patents,
having some confidential brand
protection through trademarks etc.
So you layer it all up. If you think of
Apple, they’ve done it well with the
iPhone; they’ve got design protection
on how it looks, trade marks around
the name, patents around some of
the embedded technology, copyright
of the source codes of the operating
system; so it all layers up to provide
a fairly robust, ring-fenced barrier
around their products.”
But while a major corporation has
that awareness and protection what
of much smaller businesses with very
different kind or products.
Stark at Murgitroyd says: “For
small businesses where they are
driving investment on sometimes
one product then we do see more
sophistication and awareness from
management around making sure
when they go to investors they can
show they have a thought-through
IP strategy because obviously the
investors are wanting to make sure
that if they invest in this and it comesIN FOCUS: ‘More aim for final frontier’
It is essential that Scottish companies
keep abreast of developments during
the transitional phase to ensure that
their interests are protected
Jason Chester, Marks & ClerkSpace may be, as famously depicted, ‘the final frontier’ but
its increasing exploration and utilisation is a rich source of
intellectual property.
Research by patent attorneys Marks & Clerk found a worldwide
12-fold increase in published space tech patents from 295 in
1969 to a projected figure of around 3,500 in 2019.
In the last few years alone, it noted marked growth from
1,813 published space tech patents in 2014 to 3,067 in 2018,
representing a 69 per cent rise.
According to the European Patent Office, the downstream
market for space-based products and services alone is estimated
to be worth around £102-112bn. Communication satellites
make up the biggest chunk of this market (£59bn), followed by
navigation satellites (£9bn) – the very area in which Scotland is
currently excelling. Scotland has a very strong representation of
firms dealing with intellectual property.
Murgitroyd, which is one of the five biggest firms, is
headquartered in Glasgow. But the city punches above its weight
in the sector with it also hosting offices of major European firms
such as Marks & Clerk; Heseltine Lake; HGF plus a number of
smaller players that have spun out of these bigger firms.The rights to Penman MW’s armoured vehicle
system are a focus for administrators