Innovate Local West Yorkshire

Jane Lambert

The second West Yorkshire Innovation Festival has been taking place this week.  It is a celebration of the ingenuity and enterprise of the millions who live or work in that metropolitan county.  Here is a programme of the events that have been taking place during this Festival.

I spent yesterday at Innovate Local West Yorkshire which took place at the Great Victoria Hotel in Bradford.  InnovateUK is the national innovation agency. It supports business-led innovation in all sectors and technologies.  The event, which was staged in collaboration with the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and the West Yorkshire Innovation Network, consisted of an all-day conference of local political and business leaders and academics and an exhibition.

The conference was divided into a plenary session in the morning and parallel workshops in the afternoon.  There were breaks for morning coffee, lunch and afternoon tea.   After a welcome from the leader of Bradford City Council, the Chief Executive of Innovate UK and the Mayor of West Yorkshire there was a panel discussion on what is meant by innovation and related topics. That was generally platitudinous but I welcomed Kamran Rashid's call to think regionally rather than globally.  I also noted Mark Roberts's assertion that Yorkshire had the fastest-growing digital sector outside London.

 After coffee, we heard from various entrepreneurs and academics.   I was particularly impressed with Saille Villegas who had come to Leeds from Mexico to study computing and stayed to set up the medical technology company SEEAI Ltd.  Having recently read Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate and having watched the film and ballet of the same name I have developed an interest in Mexico.  I had hoped to buttonhole her to find out why she was drawn to this country rather than the United States which is just across the border and has a free trade agreement with her government and Canada but I could not find her in the crowd.

Another impressive presentation was on AMPI (the Advanced Machinery and Productivity Institute).  This is a collaboration between the National Physical Laboratory, Rochdale Development Agency, the Universities of Huddersfield, Leeds,  Manchester and Salford and other organizations to create new machines and technology to manufacture products and materials for the future.  The Institute, which is based in Rochdale, carries out research. consultancy, teaching and training.   The presenter, whose name I did not catch, reminded the audience that manufacturing is still important to the British economy,

Yet another memorable talk was given by Ian Laidler of  Wayland Additive which develops IP-rich technologies.   Dr Laidler said that the company held 10 patent families and that a further 4 were on their way.  I have to say in passing that I was surprised not to meet any other IP lawyers or patent or trade mark attorneys even though IP is key to safeguarding investment in innovation.   Dr Laidler explained the advantages of his company's inventions.   He finished by speaking about the age range of its employees ranging from gap-year students to pensioners.   All had contributed to the company's success.

The workshops that I attended in the afternoon were on space and healthcare.  Mandy Ridyard of Space Hub Yorkshire profiled the Yorkshire space industry and discussed the opportunities that I had mentioned in Commercial Exploitation of Space: Space Industry Act 2019 in NIPC Law on 10 April  2018.   She mentioned some of the facilities for space research and collaboration that are available at NEXUS Leeds.  She was disappointed that Yorkshire was the only region that had yet to receive inward investment.  In the Q&A that followed her talk, I ventured to suggest that might be because most of the new investment in space in this country was directed to launch technology.   Yorkshire does not have a spaceport but Harlech which is a 2-hour drive away does.   I told her about the Menai Science Park's webinar to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day and suggested that she should talk to Emily Roberts of the science park and David Young of the Snowdonia Aerospace Centre.  The other main speaker on space was Emma Hatton of the Satellite Catapult.

We learned more about NEXUS in the healthcare workshop and the accelerator programme for the businesses that wished to supply the NHS.  Next came Professor Liz Breen of the School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences at the University of Bradford.  Prof Breen discussed the Digital Health Enterprise Zone of which she is the Director.

The last session was on private funding.   We heard from Jordan Dargue who had recently set up a network of women business angels to fund women entrepreneurs in the North of England,  Willian Schaffer of Mercia Asset Management and Sophie Dale-Black of the British Business Bank.  I asked Mr Schaffer how many of his companies achieved a flotation on the AIM or were acquired at a premium.   He replied that out of every 10 companies, 2 to 3 might fail altogether, another 2 to 3 might return the investment, yet another 2 to 3 might earn a small return and perhaps 1 or 2 might be "unicorns."   The afternoon was wound up by Ian Edwards of Innovate UK Edge who summariaed the earlier presentations in his "Finance Escalator."

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The Tour de France and ambush marketing

Holmfirth - the Tour de France passes through my home town

The Tour de France is of particular interest to me this year because the route passes a few hundred yards from my front door. Crash barriers have already been erected along Chapel Hill in Huddersfield and the route is festooned with yellow, green, white and polka dot flags. As everyone in this county knows, the Tour is setting off from Leeds and two of the stages are taking place in Yorkshire with a third in the East of England. There has been an arts festival since the 27 March 2014 and an international business festival in Leeds this week.

Like all major sporting events the Tour is dependent on sponsorship but sponsorship is vulnerable to ambush marketing. To protect the sponsors of the London Olympics from ambush marketing new intellectual property rights were created, namely Olympic association right by the Olympic Symbol etc. (Protection) Act 1995 and London Olympic association right by the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006. HM government was obliged to enact this legislation by the host city contract which it signed with the International Olympic Committee. Such feather bedding for the Olympic sponsors was criticized by many at the time including me (see "Olympics Association Right and London Olympics Association Right" 31 July 2012 NIPC law).

There has been nothing like those association rights for the Tour with the result that there has been a blossoming of yellow bicycles, assorted coloured flags and tea rooms and pubs throughout the county have broken out in measles (or is it polka dots). No doubt this decoration has been with the permission of the tour organizers but could anything be done about it if it was not? La Société du Tour de France has registered a number of Community and UK trade marks for the words "Le Tour de France" and some of the Tour's symbols for a large number of classes but it does not seem to have registered the colours of any of the maillots or indeed the polka dots. There is the the law of passing off, of course, but I would not like to argue that yellow, green or red spots is associated with the Tour and none other. In any case, by the time an application for an injunction came before the courts the cyclists would be well on their way to Champs-Élysées.

So tant pis as our friends across the channel would say, but does it matter?  I would reply "ce n'est pas grave",

Holmfirth Folk Festival

In the first weekend of May my home town hosts a folk festival. Music and dance are everywhere. Every bar or cafe has at least one singer. Every few square metres of open space a troupe of morris or rapper dancers. Here's a photo that I took of some English maidens dancing lustily to beguiling Latin rhythms.

We all have our favourite artistes, of course, and mine are a band from Lancashire called Ottersgear. These musicians produce a sound like none other and have a captivating stage presence. To see what I mean just watch and listen to some of the clips on their YouTube channel, particularly "Faery Glen" which was shot at our Picturedrome cinema on the last day of last year's festival, and "Sunflowers in my Head".

Much of the band's appeal lies in the voice of its lead singer, Mikey Kenney which is both powerful and poignant. In the intimate setting of a cafe bar where they performed "Sunflowers" on Sunday afternoon this hard bitten patent counsel found herself reaching for her tissues more than once as she forced back welling emotions. But perhaps the haunting quality of their music comes from their gifted accordionist, Charley Weatherill, though it would be unfair to single her, the mandolin player, the bodhran or even Kenney himself for special praise.

Pressure of work meant that I had only a limited amount of time this year. I did however catch Ottersgear on Friday evening at the Picturedrome where they performed with Steph Stephenson, Gary Stewart and Ellen & the Escapades and again on Sunday afternoon when I visited several venues. Here is a photo of one of my other favourites playing "Uncle Joe's Mint Balls".

"What has all this to do with intellectual property?" You ask. Well performances are intellectual assets which are protected by rights in performances under Part II of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. Also literary and musical copyrights subsist in the words and music of the songs. The names of bands can usually be registered as trade marks under the Trade Marks Act 1994. But really this is an excuse to blog about a delightful weekend in our lovely Pennine town. I'm sure my clients would agree that all work and no play would make Jane a very dull girl. Which I'm not really.