Who is it for?
R&D directors and managers, legal, creative and marketing directors, design managers, engineering executives, brand development and product development managers, leaders of innovation initiatives and anyone wishing to involve innovation as a core business strategy.

What is it about?
Staying ahead of your competitors through product and service differentiation is essential to maintaining a market lead. Intellectual property (IP) rights can define an exclusive business space around technology, brands, designs and content and it is vitally important that your organisation recognise and secure these intellectual assets.

However, the IP system is notoriously complex which can present a barrier to its successful utilisation. Our unique workshop has been developed to remove the barrier, by providing an immediate and engaging route to understanding the most important aspects of intellectual property law. Using an immersive learning technique, IP rights are introduced in a commercial context. Participants work in teams, making strategic business decisions and witness the effect that these decisions can have.

How do you benefit?
Gain a unique perspective on IP rights and rapidly grasp the concepts and terminology, helping you to engage more effectively with internal or external IP professionals. IP professionals can also benefit by gaining an insight into the commercial decisions facing managers who have to balance the risks and costs of implementing an IP strategy.

Three key benefits of this course;
• Effective: a stimulating game-based approach to a subject which is difficult to grasp through conventional training methods.
• Intensive: understand all types of intellectual property rights, their cost and how they inter-relate, all in a single training session.
• Valuable: be able to recognise protectable intellectual assets, develop an IP strategy for your own organisation and increase operational efficiency by communicating more effectively with IP professionals.

How does your company benefit?
IP rights are important to all parts of the business, and corporate awareness of IP issues will increase the value of your intellectual asset portfolio, and reduce the risk of losing these valuable assets. In-house sessions of this workshop can be customised to your business and used to develop an IP strategy.

Course overview
The workshop is based around a specially designed board game, where participants direct a company to make profits. The competitive element motivates players to:
• identify the major forms of intellectual property rights including patents, copyright, trademarks, registered and unregistered design rights, and confidential information.
• learn how to obtain and secure these rights, and the costs involved.
• understand the defensive nature of rights, to catch infringers.
• understand the effect of third party rights and the steps that can be taken to mitigate the risk of infringement.

Course leader
The training is provided by Ben Williams, a chartered patent attorney with extensive experience in the corporate intellectual property sector, private practice and in public sector IP Management. He has successfully helped to protect innovation and exploit research in areas such as telecommunications, nanotechnology, consumer goods, aerospace and product design. Ben has been providing IP training for a number of years and has developed the workshop after recognising the need for a more effective way to communicate this complex and important subject.