Transcript

Bruno (00:00:32) - Why should a company have an IP strategy?

Dom (00:00:36) - Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head already, Bruno, by saying it is the word, why isn't it? So all companies generate IP all the time, especially in our sort of, in our space. But they don't necessarily always think about what they're gonna do with it. Why are they developing IP? What's the end game? What's the commercial strategy of the company? And the IP should support that. So all companies generate IP, but it's finding the best ways to protect individual bits of IP as the process sort of develops in the company and the products and services that it sells develops.

Bruno (00:01:23) - Sure. So there must be some sort of internal process then that companies have in order to identify bits of IP that are valuable and worth protecting. Yeah. And presumably the majority of IP shouldn't necessarily require spending money on to protect.

Dom (00:01:42) - Yeah, exactly. Right. So I think there are some basics, you know, overall, which would be, keep everything as secret as possible for as long as possible. Record your know-how, train your staff, think about when's the right time to file patents,

Bruno (00:02:01) - Um,

Dom (00:02:02) - And various other things like that. But don't get sucked into thinking that IP is just patents. You know, there's a whole world of other IP out there and most of the high value IP that a company generates will probably never be patented. And so it's about realizing that value.

Bruno (00:02:23) - Sure. You mentioned staff training as well. Yeah. Yeah. Is this something that you think is quite important then for most companies to do, so that they understand where potentially valuable IP is coming from and how it's treated by the company?

Dom (00:02:44) - Yeah.

Bruno (00:02:44) - Is this something also that you think is important for, like, staff contracts that they understand different forms of IP, like know-how and trade secrets and how the company deals with those?

Dom (00:02:58) - I think that's right. Um, just, you know, I think there's a saying somewhere in one of the management store books about, you know, what happens if, uh, if we train our staff and they leave and someone says, well times if we don't train our staff and they stay. So I'm generally in favor of learning and training, but specifically with respect to training on IP, I think it's important for everyone in the company to understand that the IP they generate belongs to the company doesn't necessarily belong to them. Yeah. It's important for people to understand the role of consultants and how their IP may or may not belong to the company that's commissioning them. Um, I think it's important for people to understand the role of confidentiality in their work and what they can take as their experience and what they can't take as the confidential information of their current employer to their next employment. And how when they join the company, they shouldn't bring IP from their previous employer in because you don't want to. Yeah.

Bruno (00:04:02) - That's a question that I'm, I'm, I'm frequently asked about. Yeah. Uh, with, you know, from, from academics and, and people setting up their companies, is, is this difference between confidential information, trade secrets that might be owned by their employer Yeah. And the know-how that they've developed during their work? Yeah. The, um, the position that some people find themselves in is, can I actually even leave my current employer because they own all of the ip, including my know-how. Yeah. Um, which of course isn't, isn't true. People can move from one company to another company. But how do you distinguish between IP confidential information that's owned by an employer and knowhow that's owned by the individual?

Dom (00:04:44) - I, I think so. The, the, the first thing is that any, any IP or including know-how that's confidential. Well, any IP that you generate during your course of your employment belongs to your employer. That's just the rule. The rule of the land is, um, it's also written into your employment contract, but actually it's in the statute, the UK statute put as well. Um, what people, I, I'm not an HR lawyer, but what people can take with them is their experience.

Bruno (00:05:15) - Yeah.

Dom (00:05:17) - And, you know, there might be restrictive covenants about who they can work for, but that's kind of separate. What they can bring is their experience. Yeah. But what they can't take is the confidential information of one employer to the, to the next employer. Yeah. And maybe one way to think about that is experiences solving a similar problem in a similar way, but confidential information, which you can't take is solving the same problem in the same way. Sure. And I think a lot of people have sort of common sense about that. You can't just walk into a competitor and say, oh, my previous company used to do it exactly like this. You know, people, people, people know. But also the other thing is that if that information then goes into the public domain, then it's free for anyone to use. So, for instance, if you, so someone, someone said to me, oh, you know, I, I, everything that I worked on in my, in my PhD, I can't bring to my next employer. It's like, well, if that PhD was published, everything in that PhD is now in the public domain and is therefore free to use by anyone including, including you. Yeah. So there's a difference between experience and confidential information, but then people often understand that confidential information has to be confidential, and therefore that's not always the case over its entire lifetime. It might start off being confidential and end up being public,

Bruno (00:06:41) - Whether Yeah. Whether it's been put in the public domain legally or not, you Yeah. But once it's in the public domain, yeah. It's, it's there.

Dom (00:06:49) - You can't, you can't, you can't get it back. Back,

Bruno (00:06:51) - Yeah.