Partnering for Prosperity: A new deal for the Cambridge- Milton Keynes-Oxford Arc

Jane Lambert

The National Infrastructure Commission is an executive agency of the Treasury. It consists of a chair, a deputy chair and 9 commissioners. It offers impartial, expert advice and recommendations to the government on economic infrastructure which includes energy, transport, water (drainage sewerage and flood management) and digital communications. Its objectives are to support sustainable economic growth across all regions of the UK and improve competitiveness and the quality of life,

In March 2016 the Commission was asked to consider how to maximize the potential of a corridor running between Cambridge and Oxford via Milton Keynes "as a single, knowledge-intensive cluster that competes on a global stage, protecting the area’s high-quality environment, and securing the homes and jobs that the area needs." It delivered an interim report in November 2016 which identified lack of adequate and affordable housing as a major impediment to growth and recommended investment in new housing, job creation and better transport.

In its final report, Partnering for Prosperity: A new deal for the Cambridge- Milton Keynes-Oxford Arc. which was published on 17 Nov 2017, the Commission urged the government to make the corridor a national priority. It proposed new road and rail links between the towns and cities in the arc and massive house building and job creation including new town development on a scale last seen in the 1950s and 1960s.

The report highlighted some of the area's strengths:

• Cambridge generates 19 times more patents than the national average;
• productivity in Milton Keynes is 25% more than the national average;
• Northampton has more business startups per 10,000 inhabitants than any other city except London; and
• Oxford is a leading hub for bioscience, medical tech and physical sciences.

Better road and rail links and new housing are essential to maintaining and building on those strengths.

Anyone wishing to discuss the legal implications of these proposals should call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

IP and Food

Gary Townley

Jane Lambert

Tomorrow, between 10:00 and 13:30, Gary Townley, business and events manager at the Intellectual Property Office will talk about IP for the food and drink industry at Northampton Central Library. You can register for the event here.

I don't know what Gary will be talking about but there is a lot of IP connected with food and drink:

• plant breeders' rights for new grain and seed varieties (see my article on Protecting Investment in New Plant Varieties 4 May 2016 Linkedin);
• geographical indications for food and agricultural products;
• patents for new agricultural, food preparation, processing and distribution technology;
• trade marks for food and drink brands and 
• passing off for hotels and restaurants but not plastic lemons.

As I reported in Thought for Food 26 Sept 2017 NIPC London Gary has already spent the last two days at the Takeaway & Restaurant Innovation 2017 Expo.

IP in food production, preparation, marketing and distribution is a subject of which I do have had a lot of experience having been in some important cases and having advised and represented some rising stars in the industry. If you are involved in that sector I should be glad to talk to you. Call +44 (0)20 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

First Enterprise to manage Midlands Engine Small Business Loans in the East Midlands

Jane Lambert

On 29 Aug 2017, I reported the launch of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund and the publication of Spotlight: The Midlands Engine Investment Fund. On Wednesday, fund managers for small business lending were appointed in the East and West Midlands. First Enterprise Business Agency was appointed for the East Midlands and BCRS Business Loans for the West.

A small business loan is one between £25,000 and £150,000.  Loans of between £100,000 and £1.5 million are available through the Midlands Engine Debt Finance Scheme which is managed by Maven Debt Finance.  Initial enquiries as to eligibility for a small business loan can be made through the enquiries form on the BCRS website.

As I said in my report on the launch of the fund:

"Anyone seeking any kind of funding under the MEIF or any other scheme will be expected to have planned, protected and leveraged its investment in branding, design, technology and creative output and that's where I come in. If you don't already have an IP strategy give me a call on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

I can help you identify your intellectual assets and suggest the best ways of protecting them having regard to your business objectives and available resources. If you already have a patent or trade mark attorney, solicitor or other professional advisers I can work with them. If not, I can put you in touch with some of my contacts and help you choose and instruct the ones you like best. I can incidentally also put you in touch with many other professionals such as product design consultants and IP insurers and introduce you to your nearest Business and IP Centre or Patent Information Unit where you can get more advice and assistance either free of charge or at a very modest cost."

Further information on IP strategy can be obtained on my What is Intellectual Property Strategy? resource page and further information on the Midlands Engine on my Midlands Engine resource page.

British Business Bank launches the First Tranche of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund

The Midlands

Author Morwen (Abigail Brady)

Licence Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported
Source Wikipedia

Jane Lambert

The Midlands Engine Investment Fund ("MEIF") is a joint initiative between the government owned British Business Bank and a number of local enterprise partnerships ("LEPs") in the East and West Midlands. The participating LEPs from the East Midlands are the Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire (D2N2) Greater Lincolnshire, Leicester and Leicestershire, and South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnerships. The Bank hopes to make £250 million available to small and medium enterprises ("SME") in the Midlands Engine area through debt finance, small business loans, proof of concept and equity finance funds in amounts ranging from £25,000 to £2 million.

Today the Bank announced the launch of its £150 million debt finance funding scheme which is the first tranche of the £250 million (see the British Business Bank's press release British Business Bank launches first £120 tranche of Midlands Engine Investment Fund 29 Aug 2017). Also today, the Bank published Spotlight: The Midlands Engine Investment Fund which surveys the Midlands Engine area economic and funding landscape.

Anyone seeking any kind of funding under the MEIF or any other scheme will be expected to have planned, protected and leveraged its investment in branding, design, technology and creative output and that's where I come in. If you don't already have an IP strategy give me a call on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

I can help you identify your intellectual assets and suggest the best ways of protecting them having regard to your business objectives and available resources. If you already have a patent or trade mark attorney, solicitor or other professional advisers I can work with them. If not, I can put you in touch with some of my contacts and help you choose and instruct the ones you like best. I can incidentally also put you in touch with many other professionals such as product design consultants and IP insurers and introduce you to your nearest Business and IP Centre or Patent Information Unit where you can get more advice and assistance either free of charge or at a very modest cost.

For more information on the Midlands Engine, visit my Midlands Engine resource page.

Midlands Engine Trade Missions

Jane Lambert

Earlier today I blogged about Northern Powerhouse branded trade missions in IP Northwest and IP Yorkshire. I wondered whether there was anything similar for the Midlands Engine. It turns out that there is a Midlands Engine campaign page and that six trips have been arranged.

The destinations are as follows:

• NY Now show in New York between 19 and 22 Aug 2017;
• The Trako 2017 12th international railway fair at Gdansk between 26 and 29 Sept 2017;
• Anuga 2017 food fair in Cologne between 7 and 11 Oct 2017;
• China International Industry Fair at Shanghai between 7 and 11 Nov 2017;
• Arab Health 2018 exhibition in Dubai between 29 Jan and 1 Feb 2018; and
• Auto Expo Components Show in New Delhi between 8 and 11 Feb 2018.

Places on all those missions can be booked through the DIT's Midlands Engine campaign page.

If you go on any of those missions, take care not to disclose anything that you might wish to patent, register as a design or otherwise keep under wraps except in confidence (see Duty of Confidence). Remember that there is a year's grace period for design registration (see Registered Designs and Registered Community Designs).  Don't forget the international exhibition exception provided by s.2 (4) (c) of the Patents Act 1977.

Make sure that any non-disclosure or confidentiality agreement is to be construed and enforced in accordance with English law. We are harmonizing our trade secret law with the laws of the other EU member states by implementing the Trade Secrets Directive but we are not there yet (see The Trade Secrets Directive 7 July 2016 NIPC Law).

You must also be aware of the ease with which it is possible for IPR owners to get without notice injunctions just before international exhibitions in some countries (see the penultimate paragraph of Pre-Action Correspondence: What to do if you get a Stroppy Letter ....... or worse 4 Aug 2017 NIPC Law). You should also take a look at the arbitration schemes that exist in Italy and Switzerland (see my article Resolving IP Disputes at Trade Fairs 1 June 2017).

Should anybody wish to discuss any of these matters, call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message on my contact form.

Further Reading

The Midlands Engine

Nottingham's FinTech Accelerator

Source Wikipedia

Jane Lambert

In a speech on the Financial Conduct Authority's regional FinTech engagement which he delivered at the Leeds Digital Festival on 27 April 2017, Christopher Woolard, Executive Director of Strategy and Competition at the FCA said that although most of the initial development work on fintech up to now had taken place in London there was real potential beyond London for a further wave of innovation. He singled out the Leeds-Manchester and the Edinburgh-Glasgow corridors as emerging hubs but failed to mention Nottingham which was the location for one of the first if not the first fintech accelerator outside the capital.

On 17 May 2016, the British subsidiary of the US consumer finance company, Capital One, in collaboration with L Marks Ltd, announced the Capital One Growth Labs. That was a 10-week accelerator programme for up to 6 early-stage start-up and high-growth companies. The successful companies were offered direct access to Capital One's software engineering department at its Nottingham head office. That provided an opportunity to refine and test their products as well as to receive close mentor support from experts from the company and the wider tech industry. While they were in Nottingham they were also offered a series of workshops and talks on branding, business development, law and marketing, At the end of the programme they were to be offered opportunities to present their products and bid for investment.

Applications were sought in the following categories:

• Unstructured data insight
• Security and fraud prevention
• Money management tools
• Enabling healthy financial habits
• Agent technologies
• Open category.

The open category was available to any startup with a potential offering to Capital One such as payment solutions, tracking, new lines of business or a physical/digital bridge. 

Applications in writing were requested by 12 June 2016. Capital One and L Marks invited 19 businesses to Nottingham to pitch for the 6 places to a panel of Capital One's senior managers and outside experts on 6 July 2016. 

In an announcement dated 19 July 2016, Capital One said that it had chosen the following 5 companies to take part in the accelerator:

• Credit Kudos of London which had developed a method of credit scoring based on the customer's financial history presented by Credit Kudos's co-founder, Freddy Kelly, n Simple Fair and Accessible Credit which appeared on Capital One's website on 25 Aug 2016;
• Multisense, a Dutch company which had developed a mobile authentication system using face, voice and fingerprint recognition;
• Pariti Technologies Ltd., another London business which had developed a mobile app to enable users to control their income and expenditure by connecting to all their bank and credit card accounts (see How Pariti works);
• Warwick Analytics, a spin-off from the Univesity of Warwick's computer science department, which had developed automated predictive analytics that can remove the 80% of time data scientists need to organise and process data prior to analysis; and
• WealRo, a mobile app that uses AI technology and machine learning to help users to budget where savings can be made.

I have not yet found any information about what happened on the programme, whether any of the companies found investment or whether Capital One bought any of those products or invested in any of those businesses. I can report that I have visited all the finalists' websites and they all seem to be thriving. I have not found any evidence that indicates that the accelerator has been repeated or that a second cohort will be chosen. There are however other financial institutions in Nottingham and I see that the Nottingham Building Society is investing heavily in fintech (see The Nottingham announces Major Investment in New Digital Technology in Fintech Finance).

The inclusion of law in the programme of talks and workshops for the Capital One accelerator, As I said in my FinTech introduction and overview,  I see three potential legal issues with any fintech project:

• data protection and privacy particularly with the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation next May;
• intellectual property; and
• regulatory issues.

Data protection and privacy will be particularly important for all companies' products, particularly Credit Kudon which collects data on and evaluates data subjects' credit scores. As for regulation, I refer each of the British companies to the FCA's regulatory sandbox if an in so as they are not already aware of it.

Should anyone need amplification or clarification of any point in this article, call me on +44 (0)20 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.

Further Reading

Date	Author	Title	Publication
03 Aug 2017	Jane Lambert	FinTech	NIPC Law
03 Aug 2017	Jane Lambert	FinTech Glossary	NIPC Law
27 Apr 2017	Jane Lambert	Protecting FinTech Innovation	NIPC Law

Brantano - IP and Insolvency

Red Court Shoe

Author Almighty1

Reproduction licensed by the author

Source Wikipedia

Jane Lambert

An interesting headline in the East Midlands section of The Business Desk website that caught my eye was Brantano IP assets up for sale 22 June 2017. The article stated that:

"Administrators of Brantano, the stricken Leicestershire shoe firm, are selling off the firm’s brand and intellectual property assets via Metis Partners."

Metis Partners describes itself as "a multi-disciplinary IP firm with a proven track record in the assessment, exploitation, monetisation, valuation and sale of intellectual property assets (“IP assets”)". Part of its business is the sale of intellectual property rights of troubled businesses.  The firm keeps a blog called "The Musings of Metis" with some interesting articles on this topic including Insolvency and the Hidden Brand Benefit 23 Aug 2013 and the Hidden Treasure of IP After Insolvency  28 June 2016 by Michelle Korman and Negotiation 31 Jan 2015 by Morven Fraser.

I found the following announcement on Meris' website:

"Tony Barrell and Mike Jervis of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, the Joint Administrators of Brantano Retail Limited (in Administration) (“Brantano” or the “Company”), have appointed Metis Partners to support the marketing and sale of the intellectual property (“IP”) assets relating to the Company."

These include:

• "Goodwill Rights in the Brantano Corporate and Product Brands
• Rights in the Registered Trade Marks and Unregistered Trade Marks
• Rights in Unregistered Designs
• Website Content & Domain Name
• Software Behind the E-commerce Website."

Anybody thinking of acquiring any of those assets must submit his or her bid by 12:00 on 30 June 2017 which does not leave much time for carrying out searches, risk analyses and asset valuations.  If a bid is to be anything more than guesswork a prospective purchaser will need professional advice on the accounting, legal and marketing issues.  If a bid is accepted, specialist legal and other professional advice will also be required in the negotiation and drafting of the assignments and other agreements.

Anyone requiring amplification or clarification of any of those points should call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact form.