A guide to law and business practice for designers

Success as a designer doesn't solely depend on your talent or brilliant ideas. It is the knowledge of how to protect and make money exploiting your ideas that gives you an advantage over your competitors. This seminar will give you an overview of IP rights relevant to your design business. We will discuss pro-active ways of protecting your work when working with others or exhibiting at trade shows. Additionally, we will show you how effective rights management can grow your business, i.e. through licensing contracts.

Speakers include:

Clive Thorne, partner at Arnold & Porter LLP. Clive is a solicitor specialising in design law and the author of Users Guide to Copyright and Users Guide to Design Law. Clive is also a specialist in IP litigation and arbitration. In over 30 years of practice, he has acted in a wide variety of patent, industrial design, copyright, trade mark and IT litigation and arbitration including many leading cases.

Bruce Bell, designer and architect at Willson and Bell. Bruce first met his business partner architect Nick Wilson at Norman Fosters architectural practice in 2000. After working there on cutting edge projects including the winning entry for the Millennium Footbridge, Bruce went on to complete a Masters at the Royal College of Art. There he first experimented with the digital fabrication techniques that he and Nick would later research and develop to produce the Facit pre-fabricated timber building system. Although some aspects of the Facit building system are still in development, it is already proving a huge success, and was showcased in the House that Kevin [McCloud] Built at the Grand Designs Live exhibition in May 2008. For more information on his story, click here.

Presentations will take place from 6-8pm followed by networking until 8.45pm.
Admission is free, however places are limited. To reserve your place please register and book online via the Own-it website.