34Clients worked with
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About
We help companies take their ideas and put them to work. We help devise commercial strategy for company intellectual property (IP).
Many companies and individuals create an IP portfolio through the filing of patents, designs, and trade marks and the creation of copyright works.
Problems with budgeting, adhering to dates, reminders, responding to prosecution demands, and other external factors quickly move IP management into the “too hard” or “it takes too much time” category.
Typically, such companies/individuals cannot justify employing a full time IP manager. Normally the job of IP management is assigned to someone who does not have the time or perhaps the knowledge to really look after the IP portfolio.
In such situations, IP takes a back seat to what the company is doing and may not get used to its best effect, or may not get used at all.
This is where we come in.
Proper IP management is but one vital step in putting your IP to work. It is also essential to make sure that your IP is aligned with your business goals, your IP takes your competitors’ products into consideration, and is competitively placed to help futureproof your business.
Who are we?
Dr Jarrod Ward
Jarrod has a somewhat geeky background having earned his street credentials in pavement theatre and circus arts and then graduating to organic chemistry, patent law, and commercialisation. While he is a geek and carney at heart, his love of innovation, invention, and entrepreneurship is what really interests him (he thinks dogs are pretty cool too). Jarrod excels at getting to the bottom of a problem, finding a solution that works, educating others about the solution, and bringing everyone along for the ride.
Jarrod has worked with different companies, large and small, all over the world to help them achieve their goals. Over his career, Jarrod has accumulated a plethora of experiences around business development, intellectual property protection, commercialisation, negotiation, research, invention, product development, and licensing.
When not out and about helping his clients, you will find Jarrod spending time with his growing family, on a bicycle or out walking one of the numerous dogs that he cares for from his pet care business. Although he is a Kiwi and longs for the rolling hills of Wellington to go mountain biking, you may be able to get him to admit (begrudgingly) that Australia is awesome too.
Emma Lovegrove
Emma is our procurement and negotiation superstar. She has a strong financial background, having studied finance and marketing at university in the UK and then changing careers into procurement. Emma’s experience has been across multiple industries and regions, including retail, automotive, oil and gas and alcohol in both Europe and Asia Pacific. This has broadened both her negotiation skills and contract abilities, from numerous nuances within country specific laws.
Emma has 20+ plus years of procurement and commercial experience with side projects including development of some of the first chip and pin machines in the UK in the early 2000’s, to looking at the UK’s at home electric vehicle charging capabilities in 2010.
Emma has predominantly been based in the UK and Australia, with stints in France, Singapore, Lebanon and Dubai and is used to adapting rapidly to different cultural requirements.
Emma is risk focused and specialises in avoiding, mitigating and minimising potential risks from the outset.
Evan Wilcox
Evan has a strong background in engineering, having both studied aeronautical engineering and worked as an aeronautical engineer for five years before being drawn into the patent profession. His love of understanding how things work has helped him through both his engineering and patent careers.
Evan worked as a patent attorney for close to 10 years at two leading Australian firms before working as an in-house patent attorney in a state government based agricultural R&D organisation, where he managed the IP and commercialisation activities.
Evan combines his experience to bring an informed, practical, and commercial perspective to the advice he provides to his clients.
Evan is the father of two young boys, and likes to spend his spare time exploring the neighbourhood with them, and hopes one day they share his love for being outdoors hiking, biking and/or snowboarding with the same passion he does.
How can we help you?
There are four main areas that generally encompass the services we offer:
Capture
We can review the IP terms of any contracts that may be in place or that are about to be put in place to ensure that your IP is being captured, not being released, or licenced in a way that may be detrimental to your business. We work closely with your legal counsel (or ours) to ensure that your IP is staying with you.
We can review the IP terms for employment and consultant contracts to ensure that any IP produced during your employees’ employment is owned by you.
We can design and implement IP capture processes and employee reward schemes so that mechanisms are in place to capture IP and that employees are motivated to report IP. We can also devise strategies to maximise innovation.
We can educate your employees, clients, or board on IP and the relevance of it to your business, so that everyone has the same expectations and understanding of where your company wants to go with its IP.
Manage
Without proper systems to manage captured IP, there is limited value in trying to capture it.
We can put proper systems in place to ensure that your IP is documented, deadlines monitored, fees paid, applications drafted and filed, and manage your patent/ trade mark attorneys for you.
We have existing relationships with many top-level IP firms and can often obtain preferential rates for IP services from these firms.
Strategise
We can help you put your IP to work: enforcement, establishing a commercial edge, reviewing your competitors IP to find a point of difference, licensing, branding.
We can help you come up with a viable strategy that leverages off your current IP portfolio.
Commercialise
We can put you in contact with our network of designers, engineers and researchers to build prototypes/tooling, scale up, and optimisation etc.
We can also help you get your house in order before you approach or pitch to some investors to gain seed capital or on the way to an initial public offering (IPO).
Let us help you get your product to your customers.
Who do we work with?
We operate under the mantra: “If it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth doing”.
We work with individuals and companies, large and small. Larger companies that have their own IP manager may not require our IP management services, but may benefit from our innovation, commercialisation or IP capture expertise.
We love working with start-up companies on the long, hard road to greatness. We can help you make sure your house is in order before you pitch to investors to get seed capital or on the way to an IPO, or we can help you commercialise your product/service.
We work within what you need, the budget at hand, and what is best for your company or venture.
We are in it for the long haul and want to come along for wherever the commercialisation journey takes us. Where possible, we invest in the companies and organisations we work with so that we too have skin in the game.