Speaking in the wake of inventor Trevor Baylis's plea for patent theft to be criminalised, Haydn Evans, vice president of EU search operations at leading IP services company CPA Global – told IP Review Online that freedom-to-operate searches are vital for spotting and minimising future litigation risks.
'There are so many patents filed today globally that it can be at times very difficult for a company or individual to know for sure if they have freedom to operate in a particular market,' said Evans. 'I believe it would be impractical – if not impossible – to criminalise patent theft. I do however agree [with Baylis's views] that the IP system needs to become more transparent, and that there should be pressure on attorneys to produce unambiguous paperwork.'
Evans added: 'It is imperative that companies and inventors conduct good quality patent searches upfront so that they know whether an idea is worth pursuing or commercialising. There is so much money involved further upstream that patent searches are the least of your worries. When compared to the costs of setting up a product's manufacturing base, searches are likely to be a very small part of your total budget.'
Reflecting on Baylis's remarks that the UK has a poor infrastructure for protecting small inventors, Evans said: 'I agree that the UK needs to help individual inventors more. Innovation is key to the future success of the country and the Government needs to take steps to encourage and protect UK innovation.'
According to Evans, the British Isles has already developed a sound model for administrating inventions, which could be widened. 'The Scottish Government is already supporting an Intellectual Assets Centre, which is the first group in Europe designed to assist businesses in deriving value from patents,' he said.
In Evans's view, Government decisions on innovations should be based on an assessment of where the UK economy could be in ten years' time. 'We have lost our manufacturing abroad and the service sector is getting squeezed,' he said. 'So we have to get better at innovation and commercialising innovation.'
