As Global Entrepreneurship Week draws to a close for this year, I thought it might be interesting to reflect on the young entrepreneur as a market for intellectual property advise. There is, no doubt, a need but there is no market. The need is satisfied well by The UK IPO who provided lots of resource and encouragement including a special page. Both ITMA and CIPA were represented at the British Library Business and IP Center event. The idea is that by making entrepreneurs aware of the availability of professional advice they will buy it at an appropriate stage and avoid the worst traps in the meantime by using the free search tools for the UK and Europe and advice. Sadly the Business Link combined company name and trade mark checker tool launched in 2008 has now gone the way of all things Business Link. This is a shame it was the best basic starting point but it does leave the Entrepreneur who relies on Google market vulnerable to the factory filers who sell on price but are of necessity more expensive than filing direct with the UK IPO yourself.
The challenge we, as individuals, face in this Internet led market is to emphasise the value of personalised advice and the wisdom of experience and training validated by a professional body. For this personal networking is a better bet than Google Ads. The ITMA/CIPA non-core skills training team is offering an event which may interest some of you. Its a webinar so you won't see me there and, being such, I don't expect it to cover face to face networking in any great depth. If anybody is willing to offer a review for this blog, that would be great.
