01 April 2009
Trevor Baylis, Chair of Innovation & Invention seeks changes to patent legislation
Trevor Baylis, SERC Chair of Innovation & Invention, is perhaps most famous for inventing the wind-up radio, but now he's getting wound up about intellectual property rights.
Trevor is calling upon the British Government to change patent law in order to strengthen the protection for inventors against theft of their intellectual property.
Whereas UK law currently requires anyone who believes that someone has stolen an idea to pursue their case through the civil courts, which can be costly and fraught with difficulty, Baylis wants to make things less costly and less complicated for garden shed inventors.
Dr Baylis told the BBC that "If I was to nick your car, which is worth £10,000, say, I could go to jail, but if I were to nick your patent, which is worth a million pounds, you'd have to sue me".
Indeed, as Trevor points out, if it was an international mega-corporation which had stolen your idea, perhaps in another country, where would you find potentially millions of pounds required to launch that prosecution?
His answer, and the suggestion he has taken to UK Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, is simply to make stealing a patent a criminal offence in the same way that it is a criminal offence to steal copyright.
In his letter to Mandelson, Dr Baylis writes "I believe that UK plc should stand behind those courageous individuals whose ideas can change all our lives both commercially and socially".
The initial letter co-incided with the SERC graduation ceremony at the start of September 09. As Trevor arrived for his next visit – to work with students during the Enterprise in Action events, he received news that Mr Mandleson had replied to his enquiry – in a very positive light.
The inventive students of SERC are now working on new ideas and looking forward to better protection courtesy of our Chair.
