Throughout the year, Appleyard Lees provides training days aimed at developing the professional/non-technical skills of the firm’s trainee patent and trade mark attorneys, used in their day-to-day, and the operation of the business. Training days are complementary to the tutorials which focus on exam content and revision.
The sessions range from finance and renewals, to ways of working, and marketing and business development. Training days also provide the opportunity for trainees to get together as a whole group, which is good for building relationships amongst ourselves.
Below, trainee patent attorneys Jack Ashman and Chloe Johnson talk about their experiences attending this year’s training days.
Manchester training day (Jack)
The Manchester training day took place in May 2023 at our Manchester office. The first session was split into two groups. The purpose of splitting the first session was to ensure that every trainee could take away something from the sessions.
The first session I attended was ‘exam overview’ and ‘introduction to the patent exams’. I really enjoyed this session because upon entering the profession there is a vast amount of information to absorb surrounding exams, and having the ability to ask questions to attorneys who had sat the exams recently was invaluable. The qualified attorneys offered advice on exam revision techniques as well as how to make the most out of external revision courses.
The other session held was client management and handling general enquiries. As you progress as a trainee at Appleyard Lees you may get more responsibilities and managing clients in a professional manner is an important skill to have.
The second session was a drafting tutorial. Prior to the training day we were required to read through an invention disclosure which included a summary, background information, and a brief description of the invention along with some figures. In the session we worked in smaller groups to draft claim 1 of the invention which we then discussed with the whole group. At this point I had very little experience with drafting claims, and I found the group discussions and feedback very useful.
The final session of the day was an Introduction on Finance with CFO Gwyn Wilson. Even though trainees are not responsible for invoicing clients it was interesting to see a side of the business that we do not routinely interact with. The topics discussed in this session will become more relevant as we progress through our training to qualification.
Leeds Training Day (Jack)
The Leeds training day took place in June 2023 at the brand-new Leeds office. It was a great chance for trainees based at the Manchester and Cambridge offices to visit the new Leeds office after their recent move.
The structure of the training day was like that of the training day at the Manchester office. The first session was split into two with newer trainees attending Ways of Working. This session focused on how we can be more efficient with our time and highlighted the importance of working with the support teams to manage workflows in our departments.
All trainees attended a session on professional conduct and liability. This session is important to all attorneys within the profession. Having covered the IPReg Code of Conduct for exam revision it was interesting to see how it is implemented within the profession.
After lunch all trainees attended a tutorial on priority. This session involved looking at several priority situations which ranged from relatively simple scenarios to more complex. Priority dates can be confusing and being able to discuss these in more depth I found helped my understanding.
The day ended with a session on marketing and business development. As a patent attorney you are expected to be involved in business development, and as you progress through your career to more senior positions this becomes a more substantial part of the job. It was reassuring about all the different opportunities available to us at Appleyard Lees as trainees in terms of business development. I also found it reassuring to learn that marketing and business development can take many forms and we are encouraged to find what works best for our individual personalities.
Cambridge training day (Chloe)
In August, the trainees gathered in the beautiful venue of Trinity Hall college in Cambridge for the third training day of the year. This was my first training day since joining Appleyard Lees in July.
We began the day with a session from our in-house renewals team, who are responsible for the management and payment of renewals fees which are required to prevent pending applications and granted patents from lapsing. Renewals are a crucial part of the business, but one that trainees do not typically get involved with, so it was great to learn more about how the renewals team complement the work we do as technical staff.
The trainees were then split into two groups – one did a session on office actions (OAs) and the other a session on freedom to operate (FTO). Both topics are relevant for the day-to-day job as a trainee. OAs are written correspondence from a patent examiner which requires a written response from the patent applicant in order for prosecution of the patent application to continue. FTO is the analysis of patent literature to determine if a client’s invention is infringing on any patents by a third-party.
I sat in the FTO session. During this session we were tasked with performing claim construction on a patent. Claim construction requires determining the precise meaning of each feature in the claims of a third-party’s patent and therefore its scope of protection. This is important when determining if a client’s activity infringes on a third-party’s patent, and forms the basis of the advice we give to our clients.
The patent we looked at was for a paperclip from 1927! We then discussed some interesting case law around FTO and how recent decisions in cases such as Actavis v Eli Lilly in 2017 (Actavis v Eli explained – Appleyard Lees) have impacted how we perform FTO analysis.
We ended the day with a session lead by HR to discuss expectations of trainees and career progression, as well as support for trainees on managing stress, particularly around exam season. Overall, the training day was a great opportunity to meet trainees from other offices and learn about teams elsewhere in the business.
