NIPC Wales

Jane Lambert

According to the Intellectual Property Office's latest Facts and Figures, there were 382 applications for UK patents from Wales in 2017. That was more than the 158 from Northern Ireland and 296 Northeast England but considerably less than the 2,585 applications from London and the 2,067 from the Southeast.

Developments that may make a difference are the opening of the Menai Science Park (M-SParc)  in Angelsey on 1 March 2018 and the construction of the Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus.  Like the Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre in Bangor, these are initiatives of two of Wales's research universities to stimulate innovations and economic growth in their local areas.

There are signs that those initiatives are working.  I attended "Pitch Perfect" at M-SParc on 1 March 2019 and wrote about the event in A Good Way to spend St David's Day (2 March 2019).  There were some very good proposals indeed and I think that everything we saw was credible and potentially commercial and investible.

Despite an abundance of creative, innovative and entrepreneurial talent, there do not appear to be any patent or trade mark attorneys, member firms of the Intellectual Property Lawyers Association or patent counsel in North or Central Wales.  There is a patent clinic in Newport and there are a number of patent and trade mark attorneys, specialist solicitors and other intellectual property advisers in Cardiff and other parts of South Wales.  There appear to be no longer any specialist patent libraries in the principality.

That is where I can help.  I have already delivered talks on intellectual property in relation to sustainable packaging and waste to seminars in Bangor and Aberystwyth that have been organized by Beacon Biorefining and I am about to conduct a half-day workshop on intellectual property at Llanelli for Business Wales on 22 March 2019.  Following my talks in Bangor and Aberystwyth and my visit to M-SParc for "Pitch Perfect" I received several requests for advice on intellectual property issues by local entrepreneurs where I was able to assist pro bono.

Building on my experience from those talks and that visit I have launched a new website to be called NIPC Wales (or NIPC Cymru) which is intended to be a resource for startups and other small businesses in Wales. This website is linked to my main website at www.nipclaw.com which can be accessed by clicking the "Home" button on the extreme left of the pages menu.  From there you can access other specialist pages by clicking the three bars in the top left-hand corner.

To assist users I have gathered some external resources in the left-hand column such as the websites of professional advisors including my own, the Intellectual Property Office, European Patent Office, the British Library and World Intellectual Property Organization, Welsh Government Institutions like Business Wales and the Development Bank, the Welsh Universities and science parks.  In the right-hand column, I have links to articles that I have written on patents, copyrights, registered and unregistered designs, trade marks and trade secrets.  I have made particular progress with patents which group articles that I have published elsewhere under subject headings. I am also inserting links to presentations that I have given.

I hope this will be of some use to users.  If you wish to suggest improvements or comment you can call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or contact me through my message form.