23 January 2026 · Articles, Investable, IP Strategy, Small Business, Start Up, Strategy, Technology Business
How many SMEs can tell you: – What IP they actually own? – How their competitive edge is underpinned by IP and hence protected? – What IP Rights make their advantage defendable? Most SMEs will answer “yes, of course”, but then quietly behave as if the answer were “not really”. Instinctively SMEs will point to […]
Read More22 October 2025 · Articles, Brand, Know-How, Software
From $160m to $16m for the social news aggregator. Valued at $160m in 2008 when Digg had 30m users a month, the value plummeted to $16m when its users dropped to 7m a month in 2012. 45 million in funding from A list investors like Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Greylock Partners and others. This was […]
Read More21 October 2025 · Articles, Confidential Information, IP Strategy, Trade secrets
A ladder, an angle grinder and a scooter and the French crown jewels vanished in a few minutes from the Louvre yesterday. It wasn’t Tom Cruise abseiling down a wire, but it was a stark reminder that even the most iconic institutions, with centuries of prestige and millions in security infrastructure, are vulnerable. For businesses […]
Read More14 October 2025 · Articles, Patents, Tech Transfer
The question that caused the share price to fall! What can we learn about how Ocado applied IP strategy to protect its competitive edge and develop licensing revenues? From one patent to 1,900 all because of a cheeky investment analyst?
Read More8 October 2025 · Articles
Email addresses and phone numbers are generally readily available so they cannot be trade secrets. But non-public insights such as customer preferences, buying behaviour, pricing history, internal notes, and strategic relationship information, could qualify. Under UK and international trade secret laws information qualifies as a trade secret if it: – Is not generally known or […]
Read More8 October 2025 · Articles
What risks? Are you buying into trade secrets liability? Arcturus Therapeutics vs. AbbVie September 2025, claims AbbVie bought stolen trade secrets in their acquisition of Capstan Therapeutics. That former Arcturus employees joined Capstan and took valuable proprietary mRNA and delivery platform trade secrets across with them, which were later used to file patents. A complex […]
Read More7 October 2025 · Articles, Trade secrets
Another case of big vs small: ‘ we want to acquire you, oh hang on now we know what you do we don’t any more’! In 2015, startup Olaplex invented and patented breakthrough hair technology, which protected hair from chemical treatments. L’Oréal were interested and Olaplex shared confidential data under an NDA during acquisition talks. […]
Read More2 October 2025 · Articles
If ‘Educating Yorkshire’ is Anything to Go By UK School Kids Eat Too Much Sugar Riley disrupted every lesson and crushed learning for the other kids Tested he had nothing of any real note How about your diet? ‘6 teaspoons of sugar at breakfast and a coffee!’ ‘An ‘energy’ drink and chocolate bar throughout the […]
Read More2 October 2025 · Articles
New film plot and the key actors – trade secret The team formation and tactics for Saturday’s game – trade secret That album restricted only released to a few people – trade secret September 25, 2025 Judge Pamela K. Chen became the first federal judge to recognise a musical work as a protectable trade secret […]
Read More1 October 2025 · Articles
And why this is the most important thing you could do today? If most of the value in your business is intangible and most of that is held secret (think new product details, business strategy, pricing algorithm, rich data set, latest breakthrough innovation), how to retain it within your business? When even the CEO is […]
Read More29 September 2025 · Articles
The top two responsibilities for Senior Counsel IP at SpaceX advertised late September 2025, are: 🚀 Responsible for development and management of SpaceX’s intellectual property (IP) portfolio (patents, trademarks, trade secrets around business products and technologies in support of the business strategy) 🚀 Work closely with engineering teams to identify and assess competitive patent, trademark […]
Read More29 September 2025 · Articles
The US government wants to charge patent owners a tax proportionate to the value of the patents. If there is a one patent to product ratio and that product generates revenue valuation might be easier, for example a GLP1 patent and a $4bn revenue stream But much less easy with a mobile phone or drone […]
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