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So far, we've been looking at more aesthetic things, art, artistic things.

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It gets a bit more technical now. Patents.

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What a patents form. Well, they're basically related to industrial inventions.

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They're not directed to artistic things. They've got to be something that's capable of industrial application,

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something that's can be used in industry and industry here can have quite a broad definition.

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It could cover agriculture, whatever, but it's got to be useful.

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Among the most important things is that it's got to be novel. It's got to be new.

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And the derivation of this is probably historical.

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Way back three or 400 years ago, the crown, the King and Britain rewarded people who introduced new methods of manufacture.

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And it didn't matter where they got them from. If they stole them from somebody initially, that was fine.

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But it was encouragement to industry to say, if you bring in some new efficient manufacturing technique,

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I think one of them was the ability to make stained glass windows, for example.

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If you do that, you will reward you and will reward you by giving you a monopoly.

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And a monopoly means that only you can use this for a particular period of time.

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That is the origin of this, but it has to be new.

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You don't get rewarded if it's not new. Secondly, it has to be inventive.

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Now, this might sound very simple. Inventive.

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Everybody knows that invention is.

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But if you look back in the through the law cases, you'll find going back a hundred years, people have argued again and again what we mean by that.

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Another way of saying it is the invention must not be obvious.

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And the principle behind this is that you should not be able to get patent protection for something that is not new.

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Nor should you get protection for something that, although it's new, is something that ordinary people would want to do, would think of doing it.

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So it's not just what has been done.

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It's what obviously would be the next step.

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And as I say, it's got to be have an industrial application and it doesn't apply to certain things I specifically excluded.

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And we'll come up to those in a second. How did you get a patent?

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Well, you don't get a patent from just sitting around hoping for it to arrive through letterbox.

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You'll have to file an application to a patent office, and there are different routes of doing this.

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If you want to get pretty broad territorial protection,

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you make a filing at the European Patent Office that will give you protection throughout Europe.

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You file a national patent and you also get you get a 12 month period to make applications elsewhere in the world.

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And those applications can be backdated by so.

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Some choice you can't do. You don't just write and say, Can I have a patent?

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Part of the deal is you have to explain how the invention works.

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So you have to specification which sets out in detail how to carry out the invention.

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And the point of this is that. It's a deal.

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The crown says you're going to get the state says you can have protection for a period of 20 years.

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But at the end of that 20 year period, other people have to be able to carry out the invention.

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And the way we enable that to happen is for you to tell people how to do it.

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And that's what the specification should do. If you don't tell people how to do it, you may have problems.

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So although you've told people how to do it. They can't do it for the first 20 years.

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And after that. But after that, it's open. It becomes part of the public domain.

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The other thing, which is very important at the end of this patent specification.

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I think it's called claims. And these are very short paragraphs or maybe not always that short.

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And they have to say what it is that is covered by the plan.

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What is it that you can't do? And basically, I mean, if we have a patent going back some years for a a ballpoint pen,

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it would probably say a writing implement containing ink with with an end,

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which has a small ball in it, which enables the ink to be transferred to the paper or something like that.

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Now, that is not the patent, but that's the sort of thing you expect to be in a claim.

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You expect it to say. What is it that can't be done?

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Now, as I say, some things can't be patented at all.

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Computer programs can't be patented. People have tried very hard to patent computer programs with varying success.

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The usual way people do it is they pretend it's something else, which is enabled by a computer program.

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But if you have a simple program, you can't say, I patent word, you know, Microsoft Word.

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I could they could Microsoft could patent that in Europe anyway.

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You're not allowed to pattern business methods. You know, I mean,

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I think recently we had a lot of discussion in the press about Tesco having a system whereby you put products

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at the end of the aisles of the supermarket where and in doing that you could get more sales for that product.

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And they obviously did a deal where people got allowed to put their products or

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their products were put at the end of the aisle as long as they paid for it.

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So that is a way maybe of generating business.

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It's a business method. But you couldn't get a patent for that.

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You can't get a patent for a mathematical method. And some years ago, a gentleman devised a very, very good technique for calculating square roots.

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Of figures. It was clever. Very clever.

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But basically the court said, of course, he complained the patent office wouldn't give him a patent.

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The court said, no, this is really a mathematical method.

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It's a way of carrying out a calculation. And you can't have a patent for that.

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I think it's a bit harsh. Of course it was useful, but not allowed.

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You can't have patents for presentations, information and literary and or artistic works, etc.

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That's perhaps rather obvious about this one. Now, most of you have seen this stuff.

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We have used it. See Amazon one click process at the end of their website if you've decided you want to buy something.

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This has been very successful. A lot of people I'm sure use Amazon because how they registered with Amazon put their credit card details in.

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They know they could buy something in a matter of minutes rather than plotting

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their way through endless pages requiring requesting them to put in data.

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This stops people having to do that. Very clever. Is it patentable?

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No, it's not. Because although it was very clever.

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They said it was argued that it wasn't the only novelty of this was that there was some step in the background to this technique,

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which was different from that used in previous types of process.

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So it was new and may have been clever, but it was said that the.

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What they had done. Was actually.

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Improved a business method. There was no and you were not allowed to rely upon improvements of business methods in order to get a patent.

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So this is a very practical example, very useful, which is basically not being entitled to have patent protection in Europe at least.

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Still arguments going on in America, etc., where the law is different.

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But success doesn't necessarily mean patentability.

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I'm. Another thing to bear in mind is that you may think once you've got your patents through the patent office, that's the end of it.

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You one. You can stop everybody. It's not as simple as that.

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And in fact, being granted a patent by the patent office is really a provisional step.

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It doesn't mean you have a valid patent. It means the patent office has had a good look at it, done its best,

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and attempted to decide whether it's novel, whether it's inventive and had a look.

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It's carried out to search for prior publications.

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It's looked at them, it says, on the basis of what it's seen.

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You're entitled to a patent. Now. This decision is based upon what they know.

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I'll show you a little tale. This is a very successful patent related product, I should say, related to windsurfers.

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And obviously you couldn't get a patent for a sale on a whole lot of extra boats or whatever.

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But this this this particular invention has some specific, particular features.

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It was obviously windsurf, which allowed you to have a universal joint here, which allowed the sale to be moved around,

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and they could swivel the whole thing around when they wanted to change direction.

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It also had these booms, these these rods down the side which hold the sale out, which were in the shape of an arc.

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They're called ARC. That's what they call them in the patent.

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And that's allowed the sale to bend outwards.

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Now if you're windsurfing, I suppose a lot of you have done it, you would stand on the on the board here,

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on your hands, would draw on the boom, and you'd lean out here.

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So this is a very clever idea, but there's a bit of history.

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Back in the 1950s, late 1950s,

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a chap called Newman Derby used to go on on his holidays to a lake and the United States and used to take his surfboard with him.

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A lot of people would paddle around on surfboards. He started paddling around with a paddle,

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and then he found that if he stood up on the surfboard and he held the paddle out and as we can see, it's quite a broad paddle.

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And he has the wind behind him. He moved along.

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And then he could change direction, no doubt, by moving around and putting the puzzle in a different place.

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So I thought, this is very clever. I thought, well, I could make this even better.

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So what you did was some you had to steal the surfboard as before you had the universal joint, it had a sail.

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And what you see at the end, the winds behind here, just as it was as it paddle.

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Remember the winds here? So the wind's coming up from behind as a square sail here.

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And you stand in front of it and you rotate. It's not a rather cumbersome way you steer it.

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Now, these square sails very similar to very old sailing boats.

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Now, the problem was that Mr. Darby didn't have much money and they didn't have much time.

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So although he started a business and selling these surfboards, he didn't actually make a tremendous amount of money out of it.

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Now, there was another story, parallel story. And the pictures aren't very good.

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But this was about a boy, about 12 years old, 1958.

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He built what appeared to be a windsurfer, I'm not sure which is contemporaneous.

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And he made it from curtain rods, the rods that you hang curtains on.

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That was the boom. Remember that? And he in a triangular sail.

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And he sailed across bits of the south coast of England.

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It wasn't commercial. He was just playing around. He just built it himself.

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Uh. He didn't publish anything. Nothing written about it. Now when these people, Schweitzer and Drake, who were the people who invented this?

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The windsurfer we started off with. And they didn't know anything about Mr. Chilvers.

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And they didn't know much about Mr. Darby. They knew nothing about it all.

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Unfortunately, Mr. Chilvers.

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That had what his saying was very similar to this.

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And the important thing was that Chilvers had done what he'd done.

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Done. Excuse me. In 1958, whoever.

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A long time before the patents filed. The priority date is the date upon which the earliest patent for this was filed anywhere.

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So that's the date when you decide whether this is inventive.

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Well. Mr. Schweitzer from Drake didn't like competition very much.

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They sued a company called Tab Marine who was making wind surfers.

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Type of Marine. Said your patents invalid.

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And they said and the reasons are that Mr. Chilvers was using something identical before you filed your patent application.

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Schweitzer. Drake said, no, it wasn't the same because the boom, the spitter you hang off with straight.

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It's just bits of straight wood here. And the patent requires it to be all cut to be in the shape of an arc.

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The Court said. No.

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When you use Mr. Chilvers sail board windsurfer and you lean on it, the booms, these bits here will become all quite lean out and they'll bend.

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So when it is actually being used, it is identical to that.

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So you can't have a patent. They also said in any event, it would be invalid because the use of okay, the sale is different from that sale.

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The square sale. And it's, you know, pushing from behind.

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But they say it would be obvious to change one type of cell for another.

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So this is an unfortunate case in many ways because you have people who quite innocently filed a patent.

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They made a good invention, but it wasn't enough value, but it wasn't valid.

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They didn't know that. Hardly anybody knew about Mr. Chilvers.

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A 12 year, 13 year old boy. He didn't publish anything.

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Somebody just knew about it. And then he explained what had happened.

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So when we're deciding whether patents new and inventive, we don't just look at what is published in scientific documents.

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You can also look at what people have done, what they've used.

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And in this case, it was absolutely fatal. But sad.

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Well, they have to be more careful about how you draft your patent specification.

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And in the case of Schweitzer and the Windsurfer, they tried to limited by particular technical features like the oil boom,

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etc., etc., to distinguish it from things that have gone before.

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Well. What we have here is anyone who.

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Dyson. Dyson hand dryer.

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I'm sure many of you use this now if you you're going to get a patent for your Mr. Dyson and you want to get a sorry backbone.

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You want to get a patent for this hand dryer. You can't just have a patent which says, I claim a handrail or I claim a device which produces hot,

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hot air which which people can blow their hands and dry them.

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There's been known for years. They're not new. You couldn't pattern them.

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So what is it? What sort of pattern could Mr. Dyson get?

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Well. Why is this hand dryer, in Mr. Dyson's words, anyway, better than what had gone before?

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Well, basically the promotion first hand dryer says you can dry your hands in 15 seconds on both sides.

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And, you know, with conventional hand drives, you go to Oxford Station.

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There'll be a nozzle and you put your hands under like this, and then you have to do the back.

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And it takes a long time. Think about Dyson's hand dryers.

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You just put your hands and up and down, up, down like this.

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50 seconds later, they're dry. And what he basically had done is say, well, we're going to shape this so that it's like somebody's hand.

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So the back of the hand is facing this side, the front there.

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So the distance between the machine and the hand is the same.

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All the way up here is going to follow the shape of the hand and it's going to blow air from both sides.

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Very strong air jets, move them up and down very quick.

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So basically it was this idea of having being able to dry both hands, sorry, both sides of the hand.

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At the same time, he obviously couldn't get a patent for just a hairdryer.

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Sorry, a hand dryer. So you have to look at what the the new features are.

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What is it do? What's made it different? What's made an invention?

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Patents. Not everybody gets a patent.

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Not everybody wants a patent and some things you just can't patent at all.

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If you have an industrial process which is very efficient, it may be successful because it has its use.

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They've just optimised the temperature, the pressure that that the speed at which the machine goes.

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A lot of manufacturing data, it may be in volumes, but there's nothing patentable.

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You can't point to an invention. You can still protect that, but you have to be protected as no how.

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And the law will protect know how it varies across Europe has to have that protection operates but this is a UK position.

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If you can show it's confidential, information is confidential.

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And if you tell somebody else about it, like your employees or your researchers, you tell them.

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And confidential circumstances, I mean, obvious ways to do it, to say this is confidential.

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Then you can protect it as long as it doesn't enter the public domain.

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As long as it doesn't become public. Now. This doesn't have to be complicated.

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As I say, it could be masses of masses of technical data for a manufacturing process, but it can be simple.

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And this is not just technical information. It's also commercial information.

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I give you one example. A pop group called the Rock Bottom Girls, and they thought they had a great idea for a television series.

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Which would describe the adventures of this pop group as a tour around the country.

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So they approached Thames Television as they then were ITV, whatever, and their manager, Mr. Fraser said, told ITV.

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He said, Well, would you be interested in this idea we've got?

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And they said, Yeah, sounds interesting.

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He said, Well, if you want to do a series like this, a condition is that you put the girls in it as part of the cast.

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You give them jobs. So they went away and they did produce the series, but they didn't put the girls in the cast.

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They ignored it. And Mr. Fraser and the girls sued Thames Television.

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And they said you're in breach of confidence.

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There was a lot of argument actually in the case about copyright and the idea, well, we know you can't have copyright in an idea.

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But eventually they got to this point saying, well, it may not be any copyright the idea, but the idea is confidential.

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And Thames Television had no right to use it except on the conditions that had been proposed to them.

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So it can be very simple. That was up was that was all the confidential information.

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But it's protected. So it can be very, very effective as a means of protecting information.

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And it's cheap. It cost you anything. I'll give you one important example.

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The hair we say can last forever. The recipe for Coca-Cola.

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That. Has been kept confidential since 1886.

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And that's much longer than any patterns. And they lock it away in a safe in a vault somewhere.

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And apparently very few people know what it is except those that are using it to make product.

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But it's almost perpetual. So if you look after your secret information, you'll know how your confidential information.

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You can have protection forever. One of the problems with it is that it's easily sorry.

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It's easily lost. So if it leaks out and there's no breach of confidence or you publicised it in some way,

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it wouldn't be very good for protecting Mr. Dyson's hand dryer.

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Because as soon as Mr. Dyson had installed that hand dryer in a washroom somewhere, everybody would know or be able to find out how it was made.

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They take it to bits. So that was in the public domain. So protection for that as a patent.

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No use for that. But information processes things that are secret, you know, that you can get very long protection.

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So not to be forgotten. People often forget about this in terms of intellectual property.

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Some people say it isn't intellectual property at all, but it performs the same function.