Intellectual Property

Advice and guidance for making the most of this cost-effective form of intellectual property.

To obtain a patent, your invention needs to be novel and inventive. Finding relevant documents is crucial to asses if your invention achieves this.

This e-learning course contains the recordings and materials of the "IP and patents lecture series" that took place in November and December 2023.

Intellectual property and patents are strategic tools to be taken into consideration in business decision-making and strategy. In this nine-part series, specialists from the world of patents and IP introduce important concepts.

The following topics are covered in each session:

Register now for upcoming Intellectual Property and Patents Webinars in part 2 of the lecture series.

This lecture will consider how a patent can be enforced and what to do in the instance that it is. This is the sharp end of a patent’s lifetime and can sometimes be unavoidable when third party actors are involved.  We will also discuss the new Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court as recent developments to patents in Europe.

This lecture will review the strategy behind when and how to disclose your invention alongside approaches to encourage and gather investment for smaller businesses. This lecture will look in depth at matters such as confidentiality agreements and how and when to use NDAs. Trade secrets are a little known form of intellectual property and will also be discussed.

In space, no one can hear you infringing. This lecture will review how patents, a territorial right, interact with an extra-terrestrial world.

With new developments being produced every day in the aerospace industry, how can your patents be best directed towards capturing third parties that may be interested in using your technology? We will discuss the relevant legal frameworks at play alongside the approach taken by some large aerospace businesses.

This lecture will cover the patentability of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques. We will discuss what can be protected and how, accompanied by examples and advice for those innovating in this area.

Myth: Software inventions cannot be patented.

Reality: There are complex rules over what and how software inventions can be patented but broadly software is patentable if it solves a “technical” problem.

This lecture aims to provide a guide for inventors and organisations looking to protect their quantum computing-based inventions, including what is patentable, what is not, and what you need to know. This lecture also studies patenting trends in quantum computing, and other quantum technologies, looking at how these emerging technologies are being protected and how this is changing.