Adam Hart-Davis makes sure that inventors don't lose out
Writer and broadcaster Adam Hart-Davis has highlighted a little-understood risk for PR and marketing companies who organise invention competitions, such as the Ideal Home Show ‘Innovation Nation’.
When Seventy Seven PR recruited TV’s ‘face of technology’ to celebrate 100 years of the Ideal Home Show and encourage budding inventors to submit their ideas via the Show’s website, www.idealhomeshow.co.uk, his first concern was that the competition shouldn’t jeopardise contestants’ chances of getting their ideas patented. “If all these people publish their ideas,” he advised the PR company, “they will be unable to get patents. I would not want brilliant inventors to lose out.”
Under intellectual property laws, publishing details of an invention – for example, by publicising it in a competition – can constitute ‘disclosure’. Any invention that has previously been disclosed is most unlikely to be granted a patent.
Seventy Seven PR shared Adam’s concerns and sought advice from a patent attorney, Matt Dixon, an IP (intellectual property) specialist and spokesman for the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. Matt advised the organisers on what to include on the competition website and other promotional material. As a result, advice to contestants recommends that any inventors who think their invention might have commercial potential should get patent advice – and probably apply for a patent – before the competition results are announced.
Posted on January 28th, 2008
Bookmark with: