NIPC Training

Jane Lambert

There has not been much IP training lately either for business owners and the general public or for lawyers, patent or trade mark attorneys or other IP professionals.  That could be a problem because as I said in IP Services during the Emergency 23 March 2020 NIPC Inventors Club and many times since IP has never been more important than it is now.

On 21 April 2020, I tried to do something about it by delivering over the internet a talk on patents that I had given some years ago to an audience of solicitors and patent and trade mark attorneys at the offices of Morgan Cole (now Blake Morgan) in Oxford.  This was part of a double act that I performed with the distinguished solicitor and author Peter Groves.   The training started at 14:00 and lasted till 17:00.   My contribution was an introduction to patent law and overview that lasted 90 minutes. The feedback that we received suggested that the talk had gone down very well.  I updated and repeated my talk in 4-5 Gray's Inn  Square shortly after I had entered those chambers in 2013.

I found out on 21 April that a talk over the internet is a very different proposition from one in a conference room.  It is very much harder going for both speaker and audience than a viva vice presentation.   Slide sharing prevents interaction with the audience. The speaker has to proceed much more slowly to be sure of carrying everybody.  There is also a limit to the time that an audience crouch over a computer listening to a disembodied voice.   As a result, I rushed great chunks of the topic and even left out some bits of the subject matter.

I shall repeat Patents 101 but  I shall try a different way.   A possible solution may be to break a talk that lasts 90 minutes in a conference room into 5 modules of 45 minutes each for the internet.  I have posted an article entitled Patents 101 - An Introduction to English Patent Law. to a new website called NIPC Training.   The article contains links to all the Powerpoint slides and PDF handouts that I had prepared for 21 April broken down into 5 modules.   Those who attended my talk on 21 April can download all their course materials through those links. I intend to repeat Patents 101 very shortly but in 5 separate sessions of 45 minutes each,   Registration details will appear on the NIPC Training website.

I have given a lot of talks on IP over the years.  Some have been delivered to specialist lawyers and patent and trade mark attorneys.  Others to non-specialist solicitors and barristers.  Many to angels, business owners, designers, inventors, makers and other non-lawyers. In the coming weeks and months, I shall upload all my course materials to Slideshare and similar sites and post links to them in NIPC Training.   Every time I am invited to give a talk in the future whether it is one for a commercial conference organizer or one that I organize for myself I shall place dates, times and registration details in NIPC Training.

Anyone wishing to discuss this article, Patents 101 or anything else mentioned or referred to in this article may contact me through my contact page, Normally they could also call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours but during this COVID 19 emergency, all my clerks and colleagues are working from home.  Anyone wishing to talk to me should mention it on a message and I will call back by phone, Zoom, Skype or Hangouts. I can also be contacted by Linkedin, Twiitter and Facebook.