Disclaimer: our trainee blogs are written by trainees for trainees, offering career insights and industry perspectives.
For start-ups, especially those without a large in-house intellectual property team, secondments offer a cost-effective way to receive specialised support. In this post, Trainee Patent Attorneys, Oliver Herd, and Chloe Johnson, share key learnings from training on secondments with some of our clients in Cambridge. These secondments undertaken gave Oliver and Chloe the opportunity to immerse themselves in the heart of a clients’ businesses, providing insight into their unique challenges and goals, and provide onsite, bespoke support.
Oliver
For approximately 16-months, I have been on secondment with a client in Cambridge. This has worked on an ad-hoc basis scheduled around demand, but typically involves my presence on-site once every two weeks.
In many ways, the day-to-day activities are very similar to private practice. The work is varied and depends on upcoming deadlines – as the client is a start-up aiming to expand their patent portfolio, these are usually patent application filing deadlines. When a new application needs drafting, I support a qualified attorney from Appleyard Lees in a similar way to drafting applications for other clients on non-secondment days. Other tasks similar to my typical private practice work include providing summaries of exam reports. One of the main advantages of being on-site is having direct access to inventors. This allows for more frequent meetings and meetings at short notice, which can be useful when drafting or developing arguments.
In other ways, the day-to-day activities are different. The client has an in-house patent attorney who, amongst many other things, oversees the patent filing strategy. It is interesting, and a great opportunity for me, to discuss the commercial strategy of the company with the organisation directly. I am fortunate to attend in-house weekly science meetings where the scientists present their work and progress to date. For me, these are an interesting way to become more familiar with the wider work that goes on at the company and how varying company projects fit together. For the in-house attorney, the weekly updates are key, as they identify potential areas for patent filings in good time.
Chloe
I began a secondment with a client who is also based in Cambridge more recently, about seven months ago. I typically visit the client one to two times per month, depending on their needs. My duties on secondment include ‘invention capture’, which involves discussing with scientists the progress and status of their various projects.
The types of technologies I discuss are varied and allow me to interact with several different teams across the business. Liaising with the scientists directly allows me to quickly get up to speed with the technical aspects of their work, which I then discuss with a qualified attorney in my team at Appleyard Lees to determine if the projects are at a stage to consider drafting a patent application. We can then advise the scientists if any further experiments may be required to support a potential patent application before drafting an application. These discussions are also beneficial for the scientists, as I relay information from a qualified attorney on the patentability requirements in many jurisdictions, which they may otherwise be unaware of.
My time on secondment has been invaluable for gaining experience in direct client interaction at an early stage in my training. My time on site allows me to connect with people in many different areas of the business whom I would not otherwise be exposed to. I have been fortunate enough to connect with both scientists and senior management – I value making and maintaining these connections. Overall, I have enjoyed the variety of work I have been doing on secondment and the opportunity to work directly with the client on-site.
To learn more about life as a trainee at Appleyard Lees, explore similar blogs here.
