A lab notebook, a half-written thesis and a slide deck for investors: in Cambridge that is frequently the whole of a company's assets in its first year, and every one of them is intellectual property. The city has been producing science-based companies for half a century, from Arm, whose business is licensing chip designs rather than making chips, to the spin-outs that leave the university through Cambridge Enterprise each year, and the question of who owns an idea, and on what terms it can be used, is asked here more often than almost anywhere outside London.
Ownership is the first problem. Work created by an employee in the course of employment belongs to the employer, but research students, visiting academics, consultants and co-founders who were never on the payroll are a different matter, and a Cambridge IP solicitor spends much of the week tidying up assignments and confirmatory deeds before an investor's due diligence finds the gap. Patents are drafted and prosecuted by the city's many patent attorneys, with solicitors handling the licences, collaboration agreements, option deals with pharmaceutical partners and confidentiality agreements that surround them. Software companies need advice on open-source licences, copyright in code and data, and the trade marks that consumer products live on.
When rights are infringed, most matters end with a letter before action or a negotiated licence. The Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, with its capped costs and damages limit of £500,000, suits smaller Cambridge companies; patent cases of real value go to the Patents Court in London.
Trade mark and design filings and standard agreements are usually fixed-fee; disputes and licensing negotiations are charged by the hour.
Below are the firms offering intellectual property advice in and around Cambridge, verified firms first. Read what intellectual property law covers and the general IP solicitors guide, see business law solicitors in Cambridge for company matters and employment law solicitors in Cambridge for staff invention and confidentiality clauses, or compare the intellectual property solicitors in London.
