The Northeast Devolution Deal

North East Mayoral Combined Authority

Author DrFrench   Licence CC NY-SA 4.0  Source Wikimedia Commons

 

Jane Lambert

On 28 Dec 2022, Mr Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and the leaders and mayors of several local authorities in North East England signed an instrument described as the "North East Devolution Deal". That "deal", which does not appear to be legally binding because it is subject to ratification by all partners and the fulfilment of certain statutory requirements, provides for a single authority with a directly elected mayor.

The main terms are as follows:

"The North East electing a directly elected mayor to provide overall vision and leadership, seek the best value for taxpayer’s money, be directly accountable to the city region’s electorate, and to receive new powers on transport, housing and skills. 

Control of a £48 million per year investment fund over 30 years (£34 million revenue and £14 million capital), to be invested by the North East to drive growth and take forward its priorities over the longer term. 

New powers to improve and better integrate local transport, including the ability to introduce bus franchising, control of appropriate local transport functions e.g., local transport plans, and control of a key route network. 

A city region sustainable transport settlement of up to £563 million capital funding, with £5.7 million resource funding for 2022/23 and further funding to be confirmed in line with other eligible areas. The North East MCA  ["mayoral combined authority"] will invest this settlement in a manner which reflects the development of the deal prior to County Durham joining, for the current funding period to 2026/27. 

New powers to better shape local skills provisions to ensure these meet the needs of the local economy. This will include devolution of adult education functions and the core adult education budget, as well as input into the new local skills improvement plans. 

The North East Mayoral Combined Authority will plan and deliver the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) from 2025/26. 

The integration of the North East Local Enterprise Partnership into the North East MCA will ensure there continues to be a strong and independent local business voice which informs local decision making and strategic economic planning. In absorbing the role and functions of the North East LEP, the North East will deliver a number of functions on behalf of central government departments agreed jointly between government and the North East. 

A commitment to explore a local partnership with Great British Railways Transition Team so that the mayor can help shape and improve the local rail offer. 

New powers to drive the regeneration of the area and to build more affordable, more beautiful homes, including compulsory purchase powers and the ability to establish mayoral development corporations. 

To support this, additional £17.4 million for building new homes on brownfield land, subject to sufficient eligible projects for funding being identified. 

£20m of capital funding in this SR period to drive place-based economic regeneration. 

A commitment to developing, in partnership with the Government, an arrangement which ensures close cooperation with the North East’s Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), and a key leadership role for the mayor in local resilience and civil contingency planning, preparation and delivery."

The document is 48 pages long and covers 13 topics including "Levelling up Innovation and Clean Energy", "Digital and Connectivity" and "Arts, Culture, Heritage and Sport."

Para 73 of the Deal promises that:

"Domestic public investment in R&D outside the Greater South East will increase by at least 40% by 2030, and over the spending review period by at least one third, with that additional government funding seeking to leverage at least twice as much private sector investment over the long term to stimulate innovation and productivity growth."

HM government promises to build on existing collaborations between universities and industry such as Procter and Gamble's joint projects with the University of Newcastle.   The new MCA will work with local universities to strengthen the region's innovation capacity, to help realize the potential of local innovation assets and the innovation potential of its SME. Funding for infrastructure projects will be provided by the UK Infrastructure Bank, The government and MCA will work together to promote the automotive, offshore engineering and green technology capabilities of the region.

Northeast England is already a hotspot for digital growth.  This sector will grow with the laying of new cables to the continent and North America and big public sector projects such as the integration of the tax and benefits computer systems.  The MCA will cooperate with the central government in rolling out ultra-fast broadband throughout the region including rural communities.  It will promote training in digital skills through a Local Digital Skills Partnership.  The MCA will establish a specific Digital Connectivity Fund which will support the smart adoption and scale-up of advanced digital services and technologies thereby strengthening existing initiatives. 

HM government will work with the MCA to promote the arts, culture and sports in Northeast England.  This will include further investment in developing Hadrian's Wall UNESCO World Heritage Site.   Greater public participation in sports at the grassroots level will be encouraged by building on existing initiatives by the FA and football clubs.  Efforts will be made to bring major sporting events to the region and to develop it further as a tourist destination.  The film industry will also be encouraged.

Activities arising from these initiatives will require specialist advice on protecting and exploiting investment in branding, design, technology and creativity and on enforcing such protection.  I have already done a lot of work in the region over the years and I look forward to helping local entrepreneurs, business owners and their angel and private equity investors, their solicitors, patent and trade mark attorneys and other professional advisors in the future.

Anyone wishing to discuss this article is welcome to call me on 020 7404 5252 during business hours or send a message through my contact page at other times.

North East LEP's Evidence Hub

Newcastle's Theatre Royal

Author Christopher Down Licence CC BY 4.0 Source Wikimedia Commons

 

Jane Lambert

A resource that other local enterprise partnerships would do well to copy is the North East Evidence Hub. According to its homepage, it brings together key data about North East England and provides tools to help residents, businesses, education establishments and policymakers to make use of those data in a simple and accessible way. It appears to have been collated to support and inform the government's levelling up agenda in the region.

Data is clustered by theme:

• transport 
• productivity
• businesses
• innovation 
• employment and skills 
• education 
• infrastructure
• standards of living 
• people and places, and 
• internationalisation.

Some of the topics are subdivided.  For instance, "innovation" has data on Business engagement in innovation, Business expenditure on R&D, R&D expenditure by sector and Intellectual property, The intellectual property section contains information on patents, trade marks and designs registered by businesses and individuals in the North East region. It gives details of applications, publications and grants. Sadly, for each of those IP rights, the ratio of applications per population was the lowest of the 9 English regions.

Happily, steps are being taken to improve that ratio.  Rise and Design, part of RTC North, holds monthly seminars on a different science or technology-related topic. On Friday 17 June 2022 it plans a hybrid seminar on the electric revolution. Participants can come to the Northern Design Centre in Gateshead or attend online. I attended several; of Rise and Design's webinars during lockdown and wrote about some of them in this publication.  I learned a lot and made some good contacts.

Anyone wishing to discuss this topic further may call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

The Bright Side of Death

"All is Vanity" by Charles Allan Gilbert

 

Jane Lambert

Last Friday the Design Network North discussed death at its last online Rise and Design meeting.   Death is never a jolly topic but the discussion was positive as we focused on businesses that alleviate some of the pain of death.  One of those businesses was Settld which describes itself as "A simple, secure solution to end-of-life admin." The other was Koffin which makes personal eco-friendly coffins. 

Settld

Julie Wilson gave a presentation on Settld.  It is a service that notifies banks, insurance companies, employers, local authorities, utilities and everyone else who need to know of a person's death.  The About Us page states that "Settld was born from a personal experience of loss." It explains:

"Just after the funeral director had left the house, my mum and I rang company after company, reliving my grandma’s loss with each call. In the end it took us over six hours on the phone, and a further 8 weeks of emails and letters to sort out her affairs. It was an upsetting, stressful and time-consuming task."

The British government already runs a one-stop notification service for most government accounts called "Tell Us Once". Julie and her family used that service for their grandmother's government accounts and wondered why nothing similar existed for banks, utilities, insurers, pension and other service providers. So they set out to create "a simple, secure service, to notify all companies of a loved one’s death and keep updated on account progress in a single place." Settld does not charge grieving families for its service.  It draws its revenues from service providers and partners.

Koffin

Gina Czarnecki spoke about Koffin.  Her company is based in Liverpool and makes three types of coffins which range in price from £250 to £400.   They may not be quite as elaborate as some of the coffins made in Ghana where funerals seem to be more exuberant, but they are less alarming in appearance, stack more easily and are far less polluting than the traditional design.  According to Koffin's Mission Statement:

"One cremation of a ‘traditional’ coffin made of bonded MDF or particleboard produces the same NOx emissions as an average car driving 2,280 miles.   Liverpool cremates 4,300 people a year which is equivalent to 9,804,000 car miles.  Globally there are 35 million coffins sold every year."

Koffin's products are made out of lignin which is biodegradable and readily combustible.

Pitches

We also heard briefly from Rob Brooks who runs another service that alleviates bereavement called Death and Disease. Simon Briton of specialist tax advisors Quaintify R & D and Mags Bradshaw of marketing consultancy, Red Button Marketing.

Other Events in Northeast England

Also announced at  Rise and Design were York Design Week between 20 and 26 Oct and Northumbrian Water's Innovation Festival.  There is a lot going on in Northeast England and I shall publish another article on these and other events shortly.

Intellectual Property

As this is an intellectual property publication, I should say that all the businesses discussed in this article had brands that could be registered as trade marks. Bereavement services have databases the design of which is protected by copyright and the contents by database right.  The coffins designed in Ghana and possibly even those designed in Liverpool might be protected by design registration.  Designers in Liverpool might also think about unregistered design rights and supplementary unregistered designs.  The Ghanian coffins are almost certainly protected by copyright as works of artistic craftsmanship.  So, too, might any surface decoration on the Liverpool coffins.  In this regard, it is worth mentioning that artistic and literary copyrights subsist for the life of the author plus 70 years,

Further Information

If you want to learn more about Rise and Design and Design Network North, you need to contact Terry McStea. Should you wish to discuss anything else, call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

Rise & Design: Wearable Tech Webinar

The Apple Watch

Author fancycrave1 Copyright Waiver CC0 1.0 Source Wikimedia 

Jane Lambert

On 12 March 2021, the Design Network North held a webinar on wearable tech.  It was a very good meeting with speakers from Northumbria University, a company called Design Aware Body Survival ("DABS") and MediBioSense. There were also two opportunities for networking in breakout sessions and several of us had opportunities to present our businesses towards the end of the meeting.

The first presentation was given by Dt Alan Godfrey, Senior Lecturer of the Department: Computer and Information Science of Northumbria University, He spoke about his analysis of data on the way that individuals' walk which he had abstracted from devices that had been attached to patients' bodies. He gave the example of patients suffering from Parkinson's disease who tend to shuffle. Such research would improve diagnosis and patients' safety and mobility.  At one point Dr Godfrey spoke about standards for wearable devices which prompted me to ask who set those standards. The reason I asked that question is that compliance with standards set by ETSI for mobile telecommunications and other technologies sometimes requires the use of patented inventions which has given rise to disputes between users and patentees over whether patentees are entitled to licence fees and, if so, on what terms (see FRAND 8 Oct 2017 NIPC Law). It was clear from his answer that Dr Godfrey had a different context in mind but he replied that standards for some wearable tech had been set by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and other organizations.

The next speaker was Ryan McKinney of DABS Official.  DABS stands for Design Aware Body Survival. DABS is a startup that supplies a range of protective gloves designed to be worn throughout the day enabling wearers to go about their everyday business including, perhaps, shaking hands with others.  On "The story of DABS" page of the business's website, Mr McKinney wrote:

"The best ideas are those that solve problems.
For me it was the handshake."

DABS's gloves are both practical and stylish.  They are practical in that they protect the wearer from infection and are comfortable to wear all day. The "protection" page states that the gloves are treated with "Polygiene ViralOff technology, making them protective and safe". This is described as "an anti-microbial treatment added to the textile to protect the glove from contamination, and allowing the glove to sanitize itself."  According to the "tech-friendly" page, the gloves are made from a "breathable material" that "makes wearing the glove for extended period extremely comfortable, whether at work or at the shops." They are stylish because they were designed by Mrs Ryan McKinney who is a fashion designer. Photos of Mr McKinney and a lady accompanying him on the home page show that the gloves look as good on men and women in business attire as they would with leisurewear and overalls.

The last speaker was Simon Beniston who is founder and CEO of MediBioSense Ltd.  This is described as 

"a global multi-award-winning healthcare innovation company with a focus in medically certified wearable technologies, with team members and representatives, based in Europe, Africa, Middle East and the Americas."

One of the company's products is VitalPatch which is a wearable health monitoring device that continuously monitors heart rate, respiration, ECG, temperature, and movement, with data sent in real-time via Bluetooth. Mr Beniston described that device to the meeting.  He explained how it worked and discussed some of its advantages over conventional devices.

After the formal presentations, I was invited to give a 2-minute pitch about my practice.  I had intended to give a very short talk about the legal protection of wearable technology but changed my mind in one of the breakout sessions when I contributed to a conversation on IP on wearable technology.   I was asked what I did for a living and when I replied I was a barrister I was asked what barristers do with regard to IP.  In my pitch, I explained that we advise other professionals such as patent and trade mark attorneys on difficult points of law.  We represent them or their clients in the courts, Intellectual Property Office and other tribunals.   We also draft legal documents for use in business as well as dispute resolution.  Our relationship with those other professionals is often compared to that of a consultant surgeon or physician in medicine (see IP Services from Barristers 6 April 2013 NIPC News).  When Terry McStea, the moderator, asked how I might be consulted I explained that many of my clients were founders and other business owners who did not have relationships with specialist law firms, patent or trade mark agencies or other professionals and I helped them to acquire the necessary expertise to resolve a particular problem.  I added that I worked with accountants, brand consultants, product design engineers and many others as well as legal professionals.

The presentation that I had prepared would have been as follows.  Although two of the talks in the webinar had been about wearable tech in healthcare I would have noted that there are many other uses for the technology.  These include personal entertainment, mobile computing and communications, defence and security, fire and rescue, operating underwater, in radioactive conditions, outer space or interplanetary exploration. The protectable intellectual assets were obviously a product's technology but also its design and, maybe, its supplier's brand.

If a wearable product or process relating to such products such as data analysis was likely to be marketable for a number of years then a patent would be the optimum protection for the technology.  If not, some other form of protection such as trade secrecy or unregistered design right might be more appropriate.  I explained that patents are expensive.  Usually about £5,000 for the UK alone and may be £100,000 or more for the main industrial companies when office fees, attorneys' fees, translations and other expenses are dotted up. Protecting the patent from revocation in the world's courts and intellectual property offices might be even more expensive and it would be prudent to obtain insurance against the costs and consequences of litigation wherever available.

For some products such as a wristwatch style computer or indeed DABS's gloves, the appearance of the product may be the draw.   Suppliers could register those products as registrable designs or as registered Community designs for the 27 remaining member states of the EU. Overseas they could take advantage of the Hague Agreement to register designs or design patents in countries outside the EU.  Designs that are capable of being registered as registered designs but with short shelf-lives are protected automatically against copying in the UK for 3 years as supplementary unregistered designs or as unregistered Community designs in the EU.  In the UK unregistered design right and even artistic copyright protection may be available.

Finally, every business has a brand and names, initials, logos or other signs identifying that brand can be registered as trade marks in the UK and EU trade marks in the remaining EU member states.  For other countries, applications for registration in a number of countries can be made under the Madrid Protocol.

Anyone wishing to discuss this article or any of the options for protecting their brands, designs, technology or creativity can call me on +44 (0)20 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

The Impact of EU Exit on the Health and Life Science Sectors

Author Tim Reckmann Licence CC BY 2.0, Source EU Autritt

Jane Lambert

RTC North is holding a series of talks by Neil Warwick on Preparing Your Business for EU Exit – Success in 2021 and Beyond.  Mr Warwick is a solicitor at the Newcastle office of DAC Beachcroft where he specializes in EU and national competition law.  He is also the National Portfolio Chair on Brexit for the Federation of Small Businesses and has a held a number of other important appointments.  His talks cover manufacturing, health and life sciences, subsea, energy and offshore and digital, tech and creative industries.   I attended Mr Warwick's talk on health and life sciences which he delivered on Tuesday.   

He started by acknowledging that brexit is an emotive subject and he did not wish to discuss its merits or otherwise,   His task was to offer his audience practical advice and information.  The UK's exit from the single market and customs union at 23:00 on 31 Dec 2020 was assured.  There was no guarantee that agreement would be reached on the UK's future relationship with the EU.  Businesses in the healthcare and life science sectors should plan on the assumption that there will be no deal with the EU upon the end of the transition period.

There will no longer be free movement of goods, services, labour and capital between the UK and EU. That means customs formalities and possibly tariffs on imports from and exports to the UK's biggest and richest market. It will be less easy to recruit workers from the EU or second British workers to operations in the EU member states.  EU funding will cease.  It will be less convenient to travel to EU states.  Businesses should assess how these changes will affect them, identify areas of concern, make contingency plans to deal with those concerns and procedures for implementing the plans.

The healthcare sector could expect regulations to diverge over time.  Businesses should stockpile essentials where they can.  Contracts should be reviewed for clauses modifying or excluding performance as a result of brexit.  There will be a lot of new legislation.  New computer systems will be required.  The UK will cease to have preferential access to many third-party markets. There will be extensive changes to IP, data protection and the regulation of medicines and medical devices.

Mr Warwick saw a number of opportunities arising from brexit.  It was, in his view, preferable to be regulated by the MHRA. There could be an end to restrictions on state aid.  It would be easier to work with partners outside Europe,  Finally, the pandemic had shows that businesses should always be ready for the unexpected.

Thise interested in British withdrawal from the EU and its consequences may wish to check out NIPC Brext,  Anyone wishing to discuss this article may call me on 020 7404 5252 or send me a message through my contact form.

Rise and Design Online: A Webinar for Designers in Northeast England on Designing our Way out of Lockdown

By User:John_the_mackem - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1627723

Jane Lambert

On 20 Jan 2017, I attended a "Rise and Design£ networking seminar in Huddersfield on the Power of Collaboration (see Rise and Design in Huddersfield  21 Jan 2017 IP Yorkshire).  I subsequently found out that "Rise and Design" was just one of a number of services offered by Design Network North which "was established in 2007 with the aim of increasing the contribution that design makes to the economy." The project is delivered by RTC which claims to be one of Europe's leading technology transfer companies with offices in Sunderland,  Leeds and Daresbury, The "Rise and Design" seminars are held at different locations in Yorkshire and North East England each month and some of those locations are a long way from my home. For that reason, I did not attend any more until last Friday.

Since lockdown began, Terry McStea, Head of Design Network North, has held informal conversations over Zoom for designers and others interested in design in North East England and Yorkshire on most Fridays between 11:00 and 13:00.  I have attended several of those sessions and learned a lot about the design sector in those regions.  Graham Archer of Archer IP has also attended some of those events, Consequentially, he or I or both of us have participated in an occasional discussion of intellectual property.

Last Friday, Design Network North held a webinar or online Rise and Design networking seminar entitled Rise and Design: Designing our Way out of Lockdown.  There were about 60 names on a delegate list that Terry circulated shortly before the event  There were formal presentations from Matt Atkinson of Radical Panda, Dave Swan of Tharsus, Angela MacOscar of Northumbrian Water, James Rutherford of Kick Cards and Helen Short of AQCT. There were also interventions from Karl McKraken of the North East LEP and Jane Anderson of JCA Consult.

The webinar was conducted over Zoom which enables participants to assemble in small groups like breakout rooms in conventional conferences.  Before the presentations began I was allocated to a breakout toom with Matt, Angela and Karl where we introduced ourselves.   About halfway through the webinar, Terry divided us into different breakout groups.  On that occasion, I met Helen and Jo Gooding of Design Research Associates.  These were very useful opportunities to get to know the delegates and speakers a little bit better. My only criticism of them is that they were very short.  However, had they been longer it would have been impossible to fit all the presentations and interventions into the timetable.

Radical Panda's mission is "to be a trusted partner in helping businesses to understand and manage digital transformation".  It offers a variety of services from analysis to crime scene to the automotive, construction, defence, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and security industries.  On the Eventbrite booking page, Matt wrote:

"Many businesses are embracing digital technology to cope with the current restrictions, whether that's selling products online to Zoom meetings with clients. But there is a danger that we choose the first solution we come across. Matt will describe his approach to understanding where the real gains can be made, and some tools to help you explore new ways of working and services to offer."

In his presentation, Matt described the methodology by which his company identifies the appropriate solution for its customer.  He shared a slide with "Strategy" on the extreme left and "Implementation" on the extreme right with large connected hexagons in between.  One of the hexagons was labelled "Inspiration" and the other "Ideation". He discussed each of those elements in his remaining slides.

Tharsus is a product design consultancy which aims to partner customers "from initial concept to commercial delivery,"  On the Eventbrite page, Dave had written:

"Now that social distancing has become the norm, keeping employees and customers safe has become a major issue for busineses. Tharsus have responded to this by developing bump, a wearable device that helps individuals maintain a safe environment, and allows businesses to monitor the effectiveness of the systems they've put in place. Dave will give us some insights into this new technology and it's creation."

In his talk, Dave discussed the "Bump" which is a wearable personal motion system that warns the wearer when someone is too close for his or her personal safety.  According to the company's website

"It uses tried and tested radio frequency technology to alert people instantly when they’re too close. It’s peer-to-peer, GDPR-compliant and allows wearers and site managers to access the whole system’s analytics in the cloud."

Dave, who is Chief Technical Officer, spoke enthusiastically about the product without slides or notes and stimulated a lot of interest when the discussion was opened to the audience.

As its corporate name indicates, Northumbrian Water is the water utility for much of Northeast England but Angela added that it also has customers in Essex and Suffolk.  For the last four years, the company has held an Innovation Festival.  This year the Festival will take place online between 14 and 17 Sept.  Angela described previous events and discussed the preparations for the 2020 event which will encourage participation from all parts of the world as well as Northeast England.

Kick Cards is a tool to facilitate business discussion and ideas generation.  They are James Rutherford's own creation.  James describes himself as a "startup engineer" or, more precisely, as a "Web Service Developer // CTO for Hire // Creative Technologist."  The cards are sold in packs. Each pack consists of:

"42 Prompt Cards

To gently guide you with simple questions into powerful discussions 

4 Aspect Cards 

Try these to approach any of the Prompt Cards from an unusual viewpoint 

3 Outstanding Discussion Cards. 

Teams can use these to keep conversations productive 

7 Instruction Cards

How to use Kick Cards in different settings and tips for getting the most from them 

Access to a large online resource 

Extensive background info to bring more value to each card"

James demonstrated his product and described its uses in his presentation. 

"AQCT" stands for "Absolute Quality Consultancy and Training". The company offers management Systems and Training built around customers' businesses.  Helen leads the company's consultancy services.  In her presentation, she described those services and explained how they benefit their customers.

In his intervention, Karl summarized some of the services available the LEP's match funding scheme for small businesses in the North East.  In her intervention, Jane described her consultancy's Staff Wellbeing Framework Model,

Design Network North publishes Rise and Design A Guide for Beginners which contains useful information for any networking event and not just Rise and Design. I found last Friday's Rise and Design event to have been one of the best online seminars on any topic that I have ever attended.  I would strongly recommend those events to anyone with an interest in design.  I would also commend the informal Friday drop-in conversations.  Anyone wishing to attend one of those events can register here. 

While this Covid-19 emergency continues, anyone wishing to discuss this article of any of the topics mentioned in ti should clerk on +44(0)7986 948267 or send me a message through my contact page while this emergency continues.

Initial Advice and Signposting in North East England

Author Tony Grist Source Wikipedia North East England

Jane Lambert

In 2014 the North East Local Enterprise Partnership ("NELEP") published a strategic economic plan to create 100,000 new jobs in its region by 2024,  A copy of the plan can be downloaded from "the Plan" page on NELEP's website.

Those new jobs were expected i:

• Advanced Manufacturing
• Digital Technologies
• Energy, and 
• Health and Life Sciences.

Until the lockdown, the plan seemed to be working.   The website reported that  74,000 new jobs had been created since 2014 and improvements to employment rates, economic activity and productivity had been achieved.  More detail is offered in the "Our Progress" page.

Though the shutdown will have dampened demand for some of the products of the advanced manufacturing sector such as motor vehicles those four sectors should be more resilient than most.  Indeed, there should even be some positive growth,

Much of that growth will come from startups and other small business including especially spinoff ventures from the region's research universities.  An important resource for entrepreneurs and small business owners is the Business and IP Centre at Newcastle Central Library. This was the first of a national network of regional libraries to partner with the Brtish Library in offering high-quality business advice, information and training either free of charge or at a modest cost.  Newcastle Business and IP Centre offered a particularly extensive range of services to its users.

Many of those services have been suspended during the shutdown but it is still possible to access online services from Newcastle and London.  It is also worth joining the Business and IP Centre's Linkedin and Facebook groups and following their twitter stream.

One of the most useful services offered by the Newcastle Business and IP Centre was the IP clinic operated by local patent attorneys in partnership with the library and the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys.  I normally advise and assist the attorneys and lawyers who run these clinics by providing further advice on complex legal issues and other matters on which counsel are best placed to advise (see Jane Lambert IP Services from Barristers 6 April 2013 NIPC News),  While the clinics are shut I provide initial advice and signposting over Zoom.  I also discuss IP issues likely to affect private inventors through my Inventors Club blog and trade mark, domain name and other branding issues in my Branding blog.

Anyone requiring initial advice and signposting over Zoom should complete the form below.  Anyone who wishes to discuss this article should contact me through my message page.  I shall respond promptly by phone, VoIP or email.