January 10, 2025 • 43 mins
Join Lee and Gwilym as they welcome Lewis Parle, an IP insurance expert, who shares his fascinating journey into this niche field and helps unravel the complex, yet critical, aspects of insuring intellectual assets. They discuss the challenges of insuring against infringements, and the importance of asserting IP rights. From the challenges posed by Non-Practicing Entities in the IP landscape to the critical role of IP insurance in the creative and life sciences sectors, this episode covers all you need to know about the world of IP insurance!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Lee Davis and Gwilym Roberts are the two IPs in a pod
and you are listening to apodcast on intellectual property
brought to you by the CharteredInstitute of Patent Attorneys.
Hey Gwilym, how are you Verygood thank you.
How are you?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I'm really really good.
It's getting near Christmas.
We're recording this podcast inthe run-up to Christmas.
Are you feeling like reallyfestive?
It always looks to me likeyou've got a snowflake over your
shoulder on that chair you sitin.
But it's not, is it?
It's just the pattern.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That's not an anti-work statement is it there?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
you go it.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
oh, it looks a bit snowflakey oh, that's my
grandmother's chair that I hadre um reupholstered, did you?
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, the cats went for itinstantly oh I I.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I thought you meant that you had inherited it and
decided to make it morefashionable, or something like
that no, I did.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
That's exactly what I didn't.
I should make it.
I didn't reupholster mygrandmother, I reupholstered her
chair okay, okay anythingexciting happening in the world
of roberts there, okay, okay,anything exciting happening in
the world of roberts?
Um, you will put the christmastree up.
Um, there are more fairy lightsin this house than I think.
You might see a slight drop inthe national grid when we turn
all the lights on in the housenow because, uh, beth was very
(01:16):
excited to see them all, so hegot a bit carried away.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Um, I think, how many lights have you got?
Do you know how many lightsyou've got?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
individually, or how many screens individually?
I've encountered that.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
No did you know, it tells you.
It tells you on theinstructions, either on the box,
on the little kind of safetylabel that's attached to your
lights, how many individuallights are on there.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So do you?
Do you keep your lights in theboxes year after year after year
no, but I keep the instructionsthe instructions for fairy
lights.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
You never know when you're going to need them.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So we plumber.
I know my electricity, but ifyou could do plumbing I think
you could plug in a fairy lightwait.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
So we we live in an area where outside christmas
lights is a big thing, uh, andit's all highly competitive, so
I know exactly how many lights Ihave on the outside right oh,
oh is your house.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
You've got father christmas big inflatable Santa
climbing walls.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
No, I don't do the tacky sort of inflatables and
stuff like that.
It's very tasteful, I can tell.
I make lanterns I buy kind ofthroughout the year.
If I'm in like a secondhandshop and there's like an old
ship's lantern or something likethat, I'll buy it and then
stuff it full of fairy lights sothat it becomes its own like
unique Christmas feature stuffit full of fairy lights, so that
(02:28):
it becomes its own unique.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Christmas feature.
Good grief, I'll send you somepictures.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I think you should.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
yeah, I've got 7,750 lights on the outside of the
house this year.
That's why you've been countingthem.
Have you counted everyoneelse's lights?
Just to know.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Oh, no, no, no, I'm not that ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
And the longest single string I put up was a
thousand lights.
That's unbelievable.
When did you start?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
No, I did most of that in one day.
Okay, I took Monday off thisweek.
You might have seen my out ofoffice.
So my out of office wentsomething along the lines of I'm
out of the office, please don'tcontact me because I'm doing
something really, reallyimportant, unless it's a matter
of life and death and you wantto drag me off the top of a very
long ladder.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Excellent, I see I can see why you need
instructions for a thousandfairy lights string as well, so
I retract that.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I'll send you some pictures so that you can
appreciate it from afar.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Good Lord.
Podcast today about insuranceand IP ip.
How exciting is that?
Are you up for this one?
I obviously am.
Love ip, love insurance.
Bring them together, holyshimoli.
But actually it is an area I'venever.
Clients often come and sayshouldn't we get insured?
(03:41):
It seems like a really sensiblequestion, but actually I'm
always a little bit unsure aboutthe answer.
So after this one we will havethe answer and we've never done
it before.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
This is a new area for us.
Absolutely.
So it's really exciting, soshould we get Lewis on?
Yes, lewis, welcome to thepodcast.
Hello.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
You're really welcome .
So your job, your first job, isto help us understand who you
are.
So tell us a bit about thestory of Lewis Pyle and who he
is and what he's doing.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
OK, well, I'll explain how I sort of fell into
IP insurance because, well, Ithink you'd find that no one or
very, very rarely do you findanyone that works in insurance
wakes up.
You know, as a child my destinyis to work in insurance.
Usually people end up byaccident, not by design.
So I was training as a lawyerin private practice quite some
(04:33):
years ago and ended up on asecondment at an insurer that
was specialising in ensuring IPrisk.
And just so happened they hadquite a lot us um patent
litigation that they werehandling, um, and I was one of
the few lawyers that justhappened to be in the business
at that time.
I knew nothing about ip at thatpoint and they just said, all
(04:53):
right, you're a lawyer, can youjust go and try and sort these
out?
Um, and just sort of very, veryquickly tried to reverse
engineer, um, some understandingof of of ip law and practice
and really just fell in lovewith it and then from there
started working as anunderwriter specializing in IP.
So really then making thedecisions on what you know who
(05:17):
can get terms to ensure what andthat includes designing new
products and then really kind ofexploring where can IP
insurance be useful and tookthat to sort of the next level
in the M&A space where obviouslyyou can encounter all kinds of
complicated IP issues in certaintransactions.
But latterly I've become aninsurance broker.
(05:40):
So I joined a company calledLockton last year to set up an
IP risk advisory and insurancepractice.
So that's where I'm at at themoment.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
So before Gwilym dives in with all sorts of
technical questions, I found thename of the firm quite
interesting Lockton.
Is there a story behind?
Speaker 4 (06:00):
that.
Oh, it's Lockton or Lockton.
Now you make me feel like thereshould be, although there's a
lot of Locked In puns to do withlocking on.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Maybe I saw a pun.
Perhaps that's what I read,maybe I'm in a pun.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Plenty of those, but no, so it's a very large
international insurancebrokerage, so we have sort of
like I think it's about 11,000people now spread across the
globe, but it's still one of thefew family-owned sort of
insurance businesses.
Okay, cool.
So our founder is called Ron,or current CEO is Ron Lockton,
(06:37):
so it's a family name.
And you find 11,000 people andyou find yourself in a little
pod, exactly, and in the realmof IP insurance it's lonely
enough as it is.
So, yeah, I do feel very much,you know, needling a haystack.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
For context, Lewis is broadcasting from a pod.
Do you have 11,000 pods atLockton?
Is it like the matrix?
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Yeah, I wish, I wish.
No, it's very open plan, but um, I very much love being in
these little pods and just shutthe world out.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, can I also just quickly comment on the idea
that most people fall intoinsurance accidentally.
Isn't there some irony there?
Somewhere shouldn't you be ableto claim?
against that trip and slip yeah,um, okay, I'm, I'm in, so I can
.
The context, as it were.
As you know, lewis, we there'sa lot of patent attorneys,
(07:32):
people in the ip world, umgenerally listen in um, and I
suspect many, many people havebeen asked um about um just
broadly.
It's an obvious question, isn'tit?
You know, when I'm doing my duediligence, shall I get insured
on this thing?
And the IP one comes up a lotand I've always struggled with
it over the years.
Well, principally because I hadto get my head around what sort
(07:54):
of areas of insurance therecould be.
And I'll kick off and then youtell me if these are all things
or not.
Because there's insuranceagainst theoretically, I suppose
, against against, theoretically, I suppose, against launching a
product and being sued for ipinfringement.
There's insurance for um, uh,asserting your own ip against a
copier or infringer, so thatbasically your legal costs are
(08:14):
covered um, and then I thinkthere's some.
There's other areas, includingthe one that you do, but can we
start off on those first two?
I know they're not your kind ofwhat you tend to send out, but
do you give any kind of commentson the sort of insurances that
are out there and what themarket thinks about it?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
um, so I well so on the ones you just mentioned.
So we do, um, I do actuallywork in in in those areas um as
well, um, so the way that we'veset up and I'll explain the
logic behind it in reverse backinto the products, because there
is a reasoning behind it um,the way we've set ourselves up
is, first and foremost, to alignourselves with ip advisors, so
(08:51):
of all varieties, so patentattorneys, trademark attorneys,
commercial ip lawyers, m&alawyers, specializing in
particular areas, um, becauseeach of those has its own unique
kind of sets of challenges thateach practitioner is dealing
with and they all look and feelquite different, then again,
depending on the vertical thatthat problem sits in.
So what we've been doing overthe past year is doing a lot of
(09:14):
that groundwork and reversingback into well, what, what are
the products that thesepractitioners need to be useful?
Um, so, um, what?
What you have referred to,there is what you might call or
used.
You know people used to callbte or before the event type
insurances, which I I actuallydon't like that, that
terminology, I think it'sconfusing um, but essentially,
(09:38):
um, you've got, um, thoseinsurances for what I will
otherwise call unknown risks.
So, um, this is really whereone of your clients or it might
just be business managementdecided right.
As part of our risk management,we're going to consider putting
in place some sort of IPinsurance to primarily probably
(09:59):
cover off infringement of thirdparty IP risk and, generally
speaking, the market will offercover for all types of IP
infringement or trade secretmisappropriation allegations in
all jurisdictions.
So it's quite broad and thosesame types of policies have
actually grown over the years tocover lots of other additional
(10:22):
risks in some shape or form.
So, for example, oppositions,which I think is quite a useful
thing that's been added in acouple of years ago.
So this is both in the sense oftrademark oppositions when
you're looking to file and youget to that opposition period,
and also in terms of patents.
So you know post-grantoppositions, or in the US you
(10:43):
know sort of post-grantoppositions and or in the us you
know sort of post-grant reviewsand iprs, that sort of thing,
and that's covering legalexpenses, not just obviously
it's not not damages, but youare on the flip, on the flip
side of that um, or it'sslightly more rare um, because
it's quite, it's quite adifferent risk profile, because
you're you're effectively givingsomeone a blank check, is.
It is giving someone legalexpenses cover to bring claims
(11:07):
against third-party infringers.
But crucially, at the pointthey take the insurance out,
they can't know there's athird-party infringer.
And that's one of the challengesthat we've been overcoming with
the insurance products isthere's the products for unknown
and known and it's knowingwhich products are right for the
problem, and quite often,actually, a client might come to
(11:28):
us thinking they're going tobuy this general, before the
event type insurance, butactually what they've come to
seek insurance for is somethingthey know about.
So it might be that a client,for example, is going to license
their product, so there mightbe a patent license that comes
along with that, and they saidwell, actually our competitor
(11:50):
has just been sued in Germany orthe US by this other competitor
and we're slightly worried thatwe're next.
So there's this known elementof risk which creeps in, and so
then our job is to find theright solution for that, because
there's one of one sort of tripwire, if you like, with these
insurances, which is for the bteinverted commas or the unknown
(12:12):
insurance, um, you have to givea declaration and there's a as
an exclusion which sitsalongside this, which says that
the, the management team and thecompany or the group don't know
that there's any risk which theunderwriter should know about.
And if they do know aboutsomething, it's also excluded.
(12:32):
So our job is then to find asolution for that known matter.
So you walk into a differentset of insurances which are very
, very kind of narrow specialisttools for specific problems, so
they can be really for anything.
So you mentioned productlaunches.
So it might be that you'veassisted a client with an FTO
(12:53):
and you might have assessed Xnumber of patents and you've
effectively cleared most.
But there might be a few whereyou're saying, well, there's
some chances here that claimscould read onto your product,
but there's ways of workingaround it.
You can do that working aroundand take the commercial risk,
but you can't eliminate all risk.
In that case we might sort ofwork with you and say, well,
(13:16):
actually we can structure somespecialist insurance around that
so the client can go ahead withtheir strategy and then ensure
the risk that it doesn't quitepan out as they planned.
And then you've got on theother end of the spectrum.
You've got insurance aroundlitigation and more sort of the
new kid on the block is using IPas collateral for loans.
(13:41):
So what we will do there islook to typically ensure um,
usually it will be a bank whowill be um, uh, basically using
the ip as collateral, probablyfor some early stage business.
That's going into mycommercialization phase, so I'll
take a breather, but there's,there's, there's more, but
there's.
(14:01):
There's quite a lot ofdifferent variants and it's a
case of picking the right toolout of the toolkit for the
problem.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
That's a great listing, actually, and I think I
quite like the idea of thatkind of product list rather than
oh, ip insurance, which isgenerally what we get asked In
terms of that kind of I know youdon't like the phrase, but in
terms of the before the eventstuff which is probably what
most people think about.
For, fundamentally, the firstquestion on insurance is you
know, I don't know what's goingto happen, how do we get some
insurance for it?
And I think when you boil itdown, it does come down to those
(14:32):
two key categories of eitherbeing sued or being infringed.
It's never really taken off.
I mean, my feeling is, you know, over the years I've been in it
for a while and it comes upevery few years and people look
at it, but it's never completelytaken off, which is unusual
because insurance normally doesseem to work.
Do you think there areparticular problems in that
market for it?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
I was going to ask you first actually, if it could
be cheeky, why you think it'snot worked.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
No, no, I'm happy to do that and I've kind of got a
kind of a real world answer fromsomething that somebody told me
.
So give me the answer, thatkind of.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
It's always nice to see input on the spot as well,
which is yeah, you love this,don't you?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
No, I think that the real-world one for me has always
been that it's just.
It's such a case-by-case thingand also realistically, exactly
just getting down to thenitty-gritty, what are you
actually insuring for?
So, is it for legal expenses,is it for damage?
And sometimes it's that lack ofclarity that people don't have
at the outset.
I think that's part of it.
(15:32):
Also, realistically, the momentyou do know what's going on,
you can actually come to a veryclear cut idea about what the
risk actually is.
So it's not, as you say, it'snot really an insurance thing
anymore, it's a risk managementthing.
That you might want to go to alitigation fund at that point
rather than an insurer, forexample, I don't know.
(15:53):
And then the external answer Igot is that the sample is too
small.
It's quite difficult toactually really come to any kind
of statistical views on riskwithout extra knowledge.
That's the two things.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
That's my two answers , and in fact that resonates at
all um, that, yeah, some some ofthose, some of those reasonings
do, um, and what I've spentalways but it probably is three
or four years doing now is isspending a lot of time, um, with
practitioners in sort of alldifferent guises, working out
(16:23):
really what, what would beuseful.
And coming back to what yousaid, and it's sort of the
conclusion I came to quitequickly.
But I think historically, ipinsurance has been presented as
this amorphous blob of a thingwhich is, it appears, quite
generic on the surface and Ithink quite a lot of
(16:44):
hand-holding and advisory workis required to help all parties
involved figure out where doesit fit in the greatest, you know
, the grandest scheme of, youknow, businesses ip strategy,
and it should always have aplace, but it takes a bit of
work to to find that role.
So a lot of our time istherefore spent with clients.
(17:08):
Actually, I mean, we've beenjust to sort of go back, we've
been housed a lot of theindustry standard IP tech, so
the free to use and theproprietary tools really, so
that when we're talking to theclient, we already know the
world that they're sitting in,so we can look at the pinch
points of risk.
And that's what we're talkingabout it's.
We know that you're working'retalking about.
We know that you're working inthis area.
(17:29):
We know this is the environmentand these are the challenges
and these are the specificthings that you're probably
already concerned about or youradvisor is concerned about.
But we can also see that andthis is where you have your risk
management strategy it might beyou've got other risk transfer
means.
It might be that you've gotpartners where you use contracts
to do some of that work for you, but actually insurance can
(17:51):
then sit on top of all that.
So it's being able to articulatethat, I think, is the key thing
, which sort of helps get overthat sort of lack of clarity
about what it's, what it's forand it's, I think, it's being
able to switch gears.
So, um, you know, our practicein particular is really focused
(18:14):
at ip advisors but, but quiteoften we will get c-suite
management sort of asking uswithout much knowledge about ip
insurance but also maybe only aheadline knowledge about ip, and
so we sort of have to switchgears to.
Well, we actually have to covera lot of bases here on the ip
front plus the ip insurance andrisk management front, and then
maybe sometimes even direct themto right.
(18:35):
We actually go and speak to apatent on this point or the
commercial ip lawyer on on thatpoint, um, but this is where
sort of ip insurance fits in.
So I think being able to uh, uh, sort of modulate really the
the technicality of thediscussion is is a real help in
moving forwards the conversationwhether this is useful tool or
(18:55):
not.
So it's very rare, in factincredibly rare, that I've had a
conversation where there'ssomething I've picked up off the
shelf and gone right, there'sthe solution for you done.
It never works that way.
Ip is messy, uh, usually theproblems are novel.
Solutions have to be novel, um,and I would say actually um
half the time or maybe more.
(19:15):
The discussion and the pricing,uh kind of discussion actually
crystallizes people's perceptionof the risk anyway, and they
kind of go do you know what wenow feel, that you've priced the
risk for us, so we'recomfortable to take that risk
without insurance.
And that's part of our jobactually is to help people sort
of make a decision what to do.
(19:36):
What I would say is there is acultural difference in approach
approach.
So, uh, two binaries that wequite often work with are uk
(19:56):
clients and lawyers and usclients and lawyers extremely
different approaches, um, as youcan imagine, uh, the us
approach is far more, um,commercially aggressive, um, and
that means in terms ofnegotiating risk transfer.
They're far more aggressive inmandating insurances to put in
place so that you know, ifpossible they push down the
supply chain, the risk tosomeone else, and they've got to
go and get insurance.
(20:16):
So it's more prevalent in theUS to have insurances in place
for IP.
But also, I think there's aslightly different perceived
risk environment.
I think most corporates in theUS of a certain size have
probably dealt with some sort ofnon-practicing entity claim and
that triggers certaindiscussions at board level about
getting insurance, at least forpatent infringement, which then
(20:38):
opens up a further discussion,and that's less common, I think,
in the UK unless that company'sgot a large footing in the US
and they've had sort of concerns.
So I think that creates somecultural differences in how
insurance is used.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Oh, there are so many rich seams here, lee, I don't
know which one to go down, soI'm going to you mine away,
gwilym, I will, I'll mine away.
I'm going to ask just quicklyon some of the kind of more
detailed things then, because,oh, actually no, first I wanted
to say, lee, I should have saidwhich is the beginning, this
(21:14):
isn't about professionalindemnity insurance.
I think that's that's fair tosay in the lewis.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
That's not your, that's not your bag professional
indemnity, not car insurance,not your content insurance.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
No, no so just just for the record all the things
that are the bane of my life and, um, yes, I do spend a lot of
time thinking about.
I never, ever think about ipinsurance.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Well, we've got to fix that, yeah yeah, um, the um
actually the us one's reallyinteresting, isn't it?
Um, I think it's um usually thecase that things happen there
and then they happen here.
So the NPE thing there areconcerns that's coming over here
much more, with the UPC, forexample, and we've actually done
(21:53):
a couple of podcasts with somepeople with concerns about that
and some of the kind of productsout there.
Oh, I think you know thelicense on termination people
and stuff like that.
You know some of these kind ofmitigations out there I guess
should we be looking at.
Are you looking to what'shappening in the states for
models for what you could beoffering over here?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
so we, uh, so I, I.
I again just come back to someof our first principles about
how we're approaching this.
I don't think it's possible forus to look at ip in a
jurisdictional vacuum.
I think for us to be effectiveand it's a difficult job is
we've kind of got to have thispanoptican view of every
jurisdiction, because prettymuch every week we'll have a
(22:36):
client that's got operations orproducts being sold or customers
in every jurisdiction thatmatters from an IP perspective,
and so we've got to know enoughto be dangerous to be able to
help with each of thoseterritories.
But you are right that the USoften leads the way with
adoption of some of these kindof practices and products.
(22:58):
And I think one thing that youmentioned on, you know
non-practicing entities and UPC.
So we're mindful that thereused to be a very specialist
product in the market which wasjust for cover for
non-practicing entities, whichwas very useful, actually very
(23:18):
effective.
So it was quite an activelyrisk-managed insurance product
with some specialist claimshandlers who sort of knew the
ins and outs of the patenttrolls and their behaviors.
And well, we know that one.
If you throw fifty thousanddollars it will just go away.
Uh, versus this one actually, um, yeah, you might need to sort
of uh, look to some prior artand sort of threaten, threaten
(23:40):
them, um, with some sort ofvalidation proceedings, um, and
that that's sort of come out themarket, unfortunately.
So what we've done is tried tocreate a new replacement, but
that was focused on the US.
And, yeah, we do know that NPEactivity is ticking up in
Germany and it might at somepoint spread beyond patents as
(24:01):
one of the main tools.
So there's a very novel case inthe open source world, for
example, what's going on in theUS at the minute called Sc and
vizio, and that that could, uh,really open the floodgates for
potentially even like an opensource kind of troll environment
.
So there's all these kind ofmoving parts at the minute, um,
in different jurisdictions.
(24:22):
So, yeah, we've got to be ableto help clients where forum
shopping might become an issue.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
So, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's a live matter at the
minute thank you, and also,you've mentioned quite a lot
about how you know you and otherinsurers, uh, do your own kind
of risk assessment, as, ofcourse, I'm sure you always
would.
Um, it reminded me of when youknow, when you try to decide
which way an election is goingto go, the best people to ask is
the bookies.
Um, maybe, maybe for maybe foran offline conversation.
(24:50):
I'd love to know what productsyou guys are using to help look
at the risk side on pre and tourfreight and things.
You need nothing to tell me onthe podcast, by the way, but
that's a really interestingproposition.
But you know, if you want toknow the real risks, ask the
insurers well, um, I'm sorry tothrow this back again, but so
back to the principles point.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
So it's, first and foremost, we want clients that
have got advice To borrow afriend's phrase on this topic,
and it doesn't sound too kind,but you'll get what I mean,
we're not in the business oftrying to ensure stupidity.
We, we want clients to takeadvice and be smart and know
(25:31):
what they're doing, um, withsome clarity and therefore why
they're using insurance.
What we don't want is insuranceto be used as this sticking
plaster, uh, because if there'san imperfect ip position, no
amount of insurance is going tofix that business.
So it's it's, it's a, it's nota useful tool in place of
getting proper advice.
I think that's, that's a key, akey message, um.
(25:54):
But in terms of the tools andhow we use them, I mean, we're
taking a 50 foot thousand view,um, and relying on, you know,
patent attorneys to get uscloser to the ground um, and you
know, I know a lot of patentattorneys actually don't like
using fto as the description ofof what that document does, and
we don't.
Normally I'm just using it as ashorthand, but for us that is
the perfect risk review documentwhich we can piggyback off um.
(26:17):
But yeah, we, we um haveonboarded um, you know, the like
I say the industry I won't namenames, but the main industry
standard tools across all iptypes to help us make that.
I guess you could call it aquick and dirty assessment
initially, so we can have anidea about.
You know, let's say, from a red, amber, green kind of
standpoint, where does thatclient's problem sit?
(26:39):
Um, a particular issue?
Um, but we're not pretending tobe ip practitioners taking the
job of ip lawyers absolutely not.
Our job is to use those toolsto be ip practitioners taking
the job of ip lawyers absolutelynot.
Our job is to use those toolsto be able to interface with the
problem.
Um, so when we do these riskreview, um discussions with
clients, yes, we, we will.
If we found something where wethink that might be a concern,
(27:02):
we'll flag it, but always withthe caveat that we're not giving
you advice on this point.
You've got your ip advisor.
They're the ones that should'renot giving you advice on this
point.
You've got your IP advisor.
They're the ones that should begiving you some guidance on
this.
And yeah, so we're not.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
We're not taking um any ip as lawyers jobs here no,
no and um, honestly, I think I Ithink there's risk attached to
assessing risk, so I'm reallyhappy to share that and
definitely share that risk ifI'm not really stressful I think
this is this is where I thinkinsurance can be quite useful
for a practitioner, becausethere are ways and means of us,
(27:38):
the insurance industry, workingwith IP professionals.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
That takes the heat out of that advisory work.
So, you know, you might have aclient where you've got like,
say, we go back to an FTO kindof issue and there's a product
launch.
You can set out all thedifferent permutations of what
might happen should the clientproceed with A, b, c or D
(28:01):
strategy and then being able tosort of then take that to the
next level and be able to add onto that.
Well, actually there is thisother risk mitigation set of
tools that you can use to dealwith some of these risks and
that might enable that client toactually have the confidence to
progress with that strategy.
It's probably something that'sreally useful.
(28:23):
And being able to offhand therisk on that discussion to to us
or you know, some other brokeror insurer um is probably quite,
quite useful because you'veadded some value to the client
and you.
You might have helped them um,to use our tagline remove a
barrier to investing in thatinnovation um, and I think
that's what we're trying to getto with with.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
What we're doing is enable that that to happen,
which I think historicallyhasn't been done effectively
thank you, but I think I'mnearly done, lee, because I'm
well, I got this rich seams, butI'm going to go for one more,
which is, um, I think you'vementioned a couple of kind of
the more the additional tools inyour toolkit, as it were,
(29:04):
beyond the kind of the aimauthors blob stuff.
One of them was collaterals on.
I'd use a collateral on theloan, but if I may, I want to
talk about the M&A one inparticular, because I think that
I know you and I've chattedabout that before and that
sounded quite interestingbecause that's extremely focused
but also extremely relevant.
So can you just talk throughquickly what you're ensuring
(29:25):
there and how that works?
Speaker 4 (29:29):
So this is a really interesting area for a few
reasons.
So in the M&A space what'sdeveloped over the past is about
20 well, let's say it's beenabsolutely rapidly increased in.
In use is a product calledwarranty indemnity insurance in
mna transactions and effectivelywhat that product does is shift
(29:52):
the risk of a breach of thewarranties in a in a purchase
agreement away from the sellerand onto an insurer.
So, theoretically, if you know,the buyer buys a business, gets
under the hood post-completionand realises, yep, this isn't
quite what we thought theremight be.
I don't know, might be a taxrisk.
There could be a I don't knowchain of titles IP problem that
(30:14):
rears its head.
Instead of suing the sellers,they effectively sue the insurer
instead, so it takes the heatout of the transaction.
Uh and um.
Also, if you've got, you know,innovative spaces, you've
probably got the seller'smanagement carrying on, so you
don't want to be suing your uh,your r&d specialist going
forward.
That's not going to make for ahappy ship.
But one problem that that arosein this environment was if you
(30:39):
have, let's say, life sciencetransactions or deep tech
transactions or anything whereip is really at the core music,
creative industry is another onethey get quite complex quite
quickly and the risk becomesobviously very narrowly focused
on things like title validityand infringement.
And quite often we see thatinsurers weren't happy to insure
(31:05):
those transactions.
Quite often there would beproblems found in those
transactions in one of thosebuckets of risk, and sometimes
the diligence scope wasn'talways quite adequate, to speak
to the risk entirely tiling.
Get everyone a clearer pictureabout what that does.
So what we've spent time doingis finding a way to get those
(31:28):
transactions insured and againit's it's, it's trying to find a
way to help a buyer get morecomfortable to progress that
transaction.
So what we've seen, seencommercially over the past
couple of years after COVID, isthat buyers on the private
equity, vc and corporate frontshave all been more cautious.
So they're doing more DD,taking fewer risks.
(31:50):
So they're looking at insurancemore and more to shift the risk
over.
So very long winded way ofsaying what we've started doing
has been quite interventionistin those transactions.
So I'll give you a couple ofexamples.
So, um, we had a um in the lifesciences space, a transaction
where, um it, there was a quitesubstantial upfront um
(32:13):
consideration and very, verysubstantial post-completion
milestone payments.
Um, you know, should thatclient get to uh sorry, target,
get to certain umcommercialization points, the
buyer had actually done a really, really solid FTO and had
identified patterns that wererisk.
So this becomes a negotiationpoint then.
(32:34):
So the buyer will say, well,we've got this risk now, when we
acquire this business and it'sit's gonna, you know,
potentially crystallize and it'sa one product business if we
don't have the ability to sellthis product as well, we've just
basically wasted all our money.
So it's high stakes stuff, andtypically that would
historically be uninsurable, andthe buyer might go back to the
(32:55):
sellers and say, well, do youknow what?
Take X amount off the purchaseprice so they lose money.
Or they might say, well, do youknow what?
Take X amount off the purchaseprice, so they lose money.
Or they might say well, theother way of doing this is you
indemnify us if this goes wrong.
So then the seller's sort ofsitting there with the big
liability sat on their books.
So what we've done in thosecircumstances is we've actually
pulled in patent attorneys intothe space to help sorry, outside
(33:22):
of the buyers of the patentattorneys, we pulled in other
patent attorneys to kick thetires on the process and help
the insurers come up with astrategy on how to ensure that
risk so that, effectively, thatFTO work gets affirmatively
insured, so it shifts the heatout of the transaction away from
the sellers and buyersnegotiation on to insurer.
(33:43):
What's the key bit to this,though, is back to that we're
not insuring a stupidity point.
The buyer and their patentattorney has got to have a solid
risk management strategy inplace and post-completion plan
to try and mitigate that risk.
And that's where I think theinteresting collaboration that
happens between what we're doinginsurance and what the patent
attorney's role is in thesetransactions, and that's what
(34:06):
makes this work.
And so we have had some reallyquite interesting examples where
certain transactions might nothave gone ahead if we hadn't had
this quite tight partnershipwith patent attorneys helping us
find a way through, I guess,the fog of war, if you could
call it um, in some of thesequite complex pattern areas, uh,
and that's really what we'retrying to do.
So it's quite often you mightsay that the risk is not
crystallized, it's not high riskat that point, but when the
(34:29):
buyer is looking at this quitesubstantial sum of money and
really pausing for thought, it'show do we get everyone
comfortable with that?
And this is where we're tryingto fit in.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
So, yeah, that's an interesting space so well, I've
got one eye on the clock.
As you know, that's my um, oneof my jobs on the podcast.
When I'm not asking questions,uh, when it's a subject that's
so far left field for me, um, Ican't dive in.
It's to keep it on the clock.
But I have come up with acouple of questions.
So, um, I know, I know williamand I have both got sort of like
hard stop just before 11o'clock, um, but I think we've
(35:02):
got a few minutes maybe for meto dive in and ask a couple of
us, if that's okay.
These aren't going to bedifficult ip or insurance
questions, because I'm I do theelephant in the room questions.
So, so the first one is quiteinterested in your story.
Uh, so, if I remember, rightback to when we started this 35,
40 minutes ago, minutes ago,you started off as a solicitor,
yeah, yeah.
Now I don't want to call you aninsurance broker.
(35:24):
I don't know if that's theright thing to call you or not,
but that's the world that youwork in?
Which skills do you draw on themost?
Do you still see yourself as asolicitor who happens to be
working in the world of IPinsurance, or are you sort of a
full-on insurance person?
Speaker 4 (35:41):
um, it's really difficult.
So half the time I feel acomplete imposter in all worlds.
Um, um, yeah, there's alwaysthis sense of uh straddling a
lot of different um disciplines,um, and trying to tie things
together.
So it it really does oftenrequire drawing on all all
(36:04):
potential kind of skills as alawyer, thinking as a, you know,
an insurance broker wait, youare, you're trying to, you're
always trying to find solutionsand try and find a way for uh
insurers to get comfortable.
So you end up having to be adiplomat um, half the time as
well.
So it's, it's bringing togethera number of different skills,
but from the sort of the sort ofyou know, sort of using your
legal skills.
(36:25):
Um, you're working on m&atransactions, we are negotiating
around um purchase agreementsand you know the basic stuff
understanding what warranties doand indemnities and, um, how to
structure an insurance product.
It kind of you do kind of getto keep your skills sharp, but
you know we are further awayfrom the coalface.
(36:47):
So knowing where to pass thatbuck back to you know, in this
case you guys to deal with thecomplex stuff is, yeah, is key.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
And actually you've segued nicely into my second
question because you said aboutthe distance you are from the
cold face.
So in my world, kind of leadingSEPA as I do, sepa membership
organisation, patent attorneys,that's my circle, yeah.
And then, moving out from that,think about it as kind of like
a planetary kind of experience,if you like, you get those other
professions that have arelationship or an association
(37:19):
so accountants clearly have arelationship from that.
Think about it as kind of likea planetary kind of experience,
if you like you get those otherprofessions that have a
relationship or an associationso accountants clearly have a
relationship um marketeers,those kinds of things hadn't
really thought about whereinsurance brokers fit in this
great sort of um planetarium ofof associated professions.
How do you manage thoseconnections?
How do you build connectionswith patent attorneys and how do
(37:40):
you sort of manage that set ofrelationships?
Speaker 4 (37:44):
The patent attorneys, I think, are a slightly more
tricky one, because I think thatthey're maybe inherently a bit
more sceptical about insuranceand, to be honest, you can just
imagine going to a dinner partyanyway or any sort of social
event, and someone asking, whatdo you do?
And you say, say, insurance.
It quite often is aconversation killer, just right
there.
So, um, quite often you're justthinking creatively on how to
(38:08):
engage in a discussion where youdon't actually mention the
dirty word insurance at all,where possible.
Um, but, but really coming backto what I said earlier, um, I
think this is about meeting thedifferent professions on home
turf where possible, so knowingreally what are the key issues
you might be advising yourclient on at the minute that are
(38:29):
quite topical and where do wethink you know patentees might
wish that they could offersomething else and be able to
have that discussion.
I think that's really key andyou know, we all know that I'm
definitely quite geeky.
That but also I know thatpatentings are quite geeky and
trying to trying to engage insome of those geeky interests
which they inherently have, Ithink I think helps.
So, yeah, trying to trying tobridge together some of those
(38:50):
like technical points and justsort of.
Again coming back to trying tobe a diplomat, I think it is
it's key.
No, no, your audience yeah,yeah, that's.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
That's probably the great point, isn't it?
Know your audience.
So, lewis, we're coming to theend of time now.
Thank you so much for um forguesting on the podcast for us.
It's um, and I know this onewe're going to have really well
with our pat and tony listeners,who perhaps haven't thought too
closely or too much about theworld of ipn insurance, so, um,
so they've got this to lookforward to.
But we always end the podcastwith some kind of tangential
(39:22):
question.
It might be related tosomething that we've said and
it's always my job to come upwith that and, rather annoyingly
for me, I've come up with two,and I don't know which one to
use Gwilym.
So Gwilym one's reallyChristmassy-ish, and the other
one is sort of quite related tothings we've been talking about
and might be a bit, pat and Tony, geeky-ish.
Which way do you want me to go?
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Well, looking at knowing your audience, if my
two-year-old were listening andI said, do you want to hear
about Christmas or insurance,I'm afraid she'd say Christmas,
got it Okay.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
So in the event that Beth might listen to this, or
one of my many grandchildren asyou know, let's do the the
christmas here, so peoplewouldn't have heard this,
because I think you said it sooff mic just before we started
recording.
But I'm a bit concerned becausethe light in the room that I'm
in makes me look a bit beetrootyand you said I don't look like
a beetroot other than in shape Ifeel bad.
(40:15):
I feel bad so I'm gonna ask you,and then I'm gonna ask lewis,
what is your favourite Christmasvegetable?
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Christmas vegetable?
Oh, sprouts, obviously sprouts.
I hate sprouts, I hateeverything about them, but I
think that they embody Christmasin the way that people don't
really latch on to.
We did a gig once, a Christmasgig, and we called it Sprout
Because I felt it was becausealmost everything else is sorry.
You've got to be going here.
I was thinking about Christmassongs as well.
Actually, there's a Christmassong about almost everything.
(40:41):
Now you know, if you thinkeveryone's got every angle going
, I don't think there's been oneabout sprouts yet.
So, as an aside, not only is itmy Christmas vegetable, I think
it's an absolute huge candidatefor a major Christmas hit.
Well, maybe we should do that.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Perhaps that's something we could work on
together.
Two IPs and a sprout that's,perhaps that's something we
could, um, we could work ontogether.
Two ips and a sprout yeah, twosprouts in a pod yeah, it works.
Come on, lewis, so you musthave a favorite christmas
vegetable.
You look like the sort ofperson who really loves a
christmas vegetable.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
I don't know what to say to that.
Um, I well, I'm, I'm withwilliam, I'm gonna one up it.
Um, it's gonna be sprouts witha lot of butter, garlic and
bacon.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Fancy sprouts, fried sprouts, yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
No, I'll take that.
Are you going to?
Speaker 1 (41:28):
ask me.
Are you going to ask me?
Yeah, go on, Lee.
What's your favourite Christmasdish?
Speaker 3 (41:31):
I'm just going to build on the experience because
I'm with Lewis.
So for years now I've beenfrying my sprouts with a little
bit of garlic and bacon andbutter.
But last year I've been fryingmy sprouts with a little bit of
garlic and bacon and butter butlast year I had a cheese sauce
and that transformed even.
I do love cauliflower cheeseand I didn't have any
cauliflower in the house atChristmas.
I thought let me try sort of aBrussels sprout cheese and it
(41:53):
was amazing.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
I see and I'm guessing you have all the
windows and let that smell waftdown the road so that everyone
knows that not only have you gotthe best lights but you got the
best sprouts if you say so, umI you know, of course I.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
I have this ongoing issue with um nasal polyps, so I
have amnesty.
I can't even say it, I can'tsmell at the moment, so I'm not
even going to appreciate thechristmas smells, this christmas
oh no, I'm sorry to hear thatyeah, yeah, no sense.
Sense of smell.
Lewis, thank you so much forcoming on.
It's been a pleasure having youon, gwilym.
I will see you on the nextrecording, which is fairly soon
in fact.
We've not got too long to waitThree hours yeah.
(42:31):
But we'll just remind ourlistener that if he or she wants
to leave a nice sort of reviewon the podcasting platform of
their choice, then it'll helpother people find the podcast.
And also we're hoping thatLewis is going to plant this
around all of his variousinsurance contacts so that we
break the world of insurance.
We'll see you next time.
(43:09):
The End.
Lee Davis and Gwilym Roberts are the two IPs in a pod
and you are listening to apodcast on intellectual property
brought to you by the CharteredInstitute of Patent Attorneys.
Hey Gwilym, how are you Verygood thank you.
How are you?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
I'm really really good.
It's getting near Christmas.
We're recording this podcast inthe run-up to Christmas.
Are you feeling like reallyfestive?
It always looks to me likeyou've got a snowflake over your
shoulder on that chair you sitin.
But it's not, is it?
It's just the pattern.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
That's not an anti-work statement is it there?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
you go it.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
oh, it looks a bit snowflakey oh, that's my
grandmother's chair that I hadre um reupholstered, did you?
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, the cats went for itinstantly oh I I.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I thought you meant that you had inherited it and
decided to make it morefashionable, or something like
that no, I did.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
That's exactly what I didn't.
I should make it.
I didn't reupholster mygrandmother, I reupholstered her
chair okay, okay anythingexciting happening in the world
of roberts there, okay, okay,anything exciting happening in
the world of roberts?
Um, you will put the christmastree up.
Um, there are more fairy lightsin this house than I think.
You might see a slight drop inthe national grid when we turn
all the lights on in the housenow because, uh, beth was very
(01:16):
excited to see them all, so hegot a bit carried away.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Um, I think, how many lights have you got?
Do you know how many lightsyou've got?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
individually, or how many screens individually?
I've encountered that.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
No did you know, it tells you.
It tells you on theinstructions, either on the box,
on the little kind of safetylabel that's attached to your
lights, how many individuallights are on there.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So do you?
Do you keep your lights in theboxes year after year after year
no, but I keep the instructionsthe instructions for fairy
lights.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
You never know when you're going to need them.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So we plumber.
I know my electricity, but ifyou could do plumbing I think
you could plug in a fairy lightwait.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
So we we live in an area where outside christmas
lights is a big thing, uh, andit's all highly competitive, so
I know exactly how many lights Ihave on the outside right oh,
oh is your house.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
You've got father christmas big inflatable Santa
climbing walls.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
No, I don't do the tacky sort of inflatables and
stuff like that.
It's very tasteful, I can tell.
I make lanterns I buy kind ofthroughout the year.
If I'm in like a secondhandshop and there's like an old
ship's lantern or something likethat, I'll buy it and then
stuff it full of fairy lights sothat it becomes its own like
unique Christmas feature stuffit full of fairy lights, so that
(02:28):
it becomes its own unique.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Christmas feature.
Good grief, I'll send you somepictures.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I think you should.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
yeah, I've got 7,750 lights on the outside of the
house this year.
That's why you've been countingthem.
Have you counted everyoneelse's lights?
Just to know.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Oh, no, no, no, I'm not that ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
And the longest single string I put up was a
thousand lights.
That's unbelievable.
When did you start?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
No, I did most of that in one day.
Okay, I took Monday off thisweek.
You might have seen my out ofoffice.
So my out of office wentsomething along the lines of I'm
out of the office, please don'tcontact me because I'm doing
something really, reallyimportant, unless it's a matter
of life and death and you wantto drag me off the top of a very
long ladder.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Excellent, I see I can see why you need
instructions for a thousandfairy lights string as well, so
I retract that.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
I'll send you some pictures so that you can
appreciate it from afar.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Good Lord.
Podcast today about insuranceand IP ip.
How exciting is that?
Are you up for this one?
I obviously am.
Love ip, love insurance.
Bring them together, holyshimoli.
But actually it is an area I'venever.
Clients often come and sayshouldn't we get insured?
(03:41):
It seems like a really sensiblequestion, but actually I'm
always a little bit unsure aboutthe answer.
So after this one we will havethe answer and we've never done
it before.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
This is a new area for us.
Absolutely.
So it's really exciting, soshould we get Lewis on?
Yes, lewis, welcome to thepodcast.
Hello.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
You're really welcome .
So your job, your first job, isto help us understand who you
are.
So tell us a bit about thestory of Lewis Pyle and who he
is and what he's doing.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
OK, well, I'll explain how I sort of fell into
IP insurance because, well, Ithink you'd find that no one or
very, very rarely do you findanyone that works in insurance
wakes up.
You know, as a child my destinyis to work in insurance.
Usually people end up byaccident, not by design.
So I was training as a lawyerin private practice quite some
(04:33):
years ago and ended up on asecondment at an insurer that
was specialising in ensuring IPrisk.
And just so happened they hadquite a lot us um patent
litigation that they werehandling, um, and I was one of
the few lawyers that justhappened to be in the business
at that time.
I knew nothing about ip at thatpoint and they just said, all
(04:53):
right, you're a lawyer, can youjust go and try and sort these
out?
Um, and just sort of very, veryquickly tried to reverse
engineer, um, some understandingof of of ip law and practice
and really just fell in lovewith it and then from there
started working as anunderwriter specializing in IP.
So really then making thedecisions on what you know who
(05:17):
can get terms to ensure what andthat includes designing new
products and then really kind ofexploring where can IP
insurance be useful and tookthat to sort of the next level
in the M&A space where obviouslyyou can encounter all kinds of
complicated IP issues in certaintransactions.
But latterly I've become aninsurance broker.
(05:40):
So I joined a company calledLockton last year to set up an
IP risk advisory and insurancepractice.
So that's where I'm at at themoment.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
So before Gwilym dives in with all sorts of
technical questions, I found thename of the firm quite
interesting Lockton.
Is there a story behind?
Speaker 4 (06:00):
that.
Oh, it's Lockton or Lockton.
Now you make me feel like thereshould be, although there's a
lot of Locked In puns to do withlocking on.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Maybe I saw a pun.
Perhaps that's what I read,maybe I'm in a pun.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Plenty of those, but no, so it's a very large
international insurancebrokerage, so we have sort of
like I think it's about 11,000people now spread across the
globe, but it's still one of thefew family-owned sort of
insurance businesses.
Okay, cool.
So our founder is called Ron,or current CEO is Ron Lockton,
(06:37):
so it's a family name.
And you find 11,000 people andyou find yourself in a little
pod, exactly, and in the realmof IP insurance it's lonely
enough as it is.
So, yeah, I do feel very much,you know, needling a haystack.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
For context, Lewis is broadcasting from a pod.
Do you have 11,000 pods atLockton?
Is it like the matrix?
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Yeah, I wish, I wish.
No, it's very open plan, but um, I very much love being in
these little pods and just shutthe world out.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, can I also just quickly comment on the idea
that most people fall intoinsurance accidentally.
Isn't there some irony there?
Somewhere shouldn't you be ableto claim?
against that trip and slip yeah,um, okay, I'm, I'm in, so I can
.
The context, as it were.
As you know, lewis, we there'sa lot of patent attorneys,
(07:32):
people in the ip world, umgenerally listen in um, and I
suspect many, many people havebeen asked um about um just
broadly.
It's an obvious question, isn'tit?
You know, when I'm doing my duediligence, shall I get insured
on this thing?
And the IP one comes up a lotand I've always struggled with
it over the years.
Well, principally because I hadto get my head around what sort
(07:54):
of areas of insurance therecould be.
And I'll kick off and then youtell me if these are all things
or not.
Because there's insuranceagainst theoretically, I suppose
, against against, theoretically, I suppose, against launching a
product and being sued for ipinfringement.
There's insurance for um, uh,asserting your own ip against a
copier or infringer, so thatbasically your legal costs are
(08:14):
covered um, and then I thinkthere's some.
There's other areas, includingthe one that you do, but can we
start off on those first two?
I know they're not your kind ofwhat you tend to send out, but
do you give any kind of commentson the sort of insurances that
are out there and what themarket thinks about it?
Speaker 4 (08:30):
um, so I well so on the ones you just mentioned.
So we do, um, I do actuallywork in in in those areas um as
well, um, so the way that we'veset up and I'll explain the
logic behind it in reverse backinto the products, because there
is a reasoning behind it um,the way we've set ourselves up
is, first and foremost, to alignourselves with ip advisors, so
(08:51):
of all varieties, so patentattorneys, trademark attorneys,
commercial ip lawyers, m&alawyers, specializing in
particular areas, um, becauseeach of those has its own unique
kind of sets of challenges thateach practitioner is dealing
with and they all look and feelquite different, then again,
depending on the vertical thatthat problem sits in.
So what we've been doing overthe past year is doing a lot of
(09:14):
that groundwork and reversingback into well, what, what are
the products that thesepractitioners need to be useful?
Um, so, um, what?
What you have referred to,there is what you might call or
used.
You know people used to callbte or before the event type
insurances, which I I actuallydon't like that, that
terminology, I think it'sconfusing um, but essentially,
(09:38):
um, you've got, um, thoseinsurances for what I will
otherwise call unknown risks.
So, um, this is really whereone of your clients or it might
just be business managementdecided right.
As part of our risk management,we're going to consider putting
in place some sort of IPinsurance to primarily probably
(09:59):
cover off infringement of thirdparty IP risk and, generally
speaking, the market will offercover for all types of IP
infringement or trade secretmisappropriation allegations in
all jurisdictions.
So it's quite broad and thosesame types of policies have
actually grown over the years tocover lots of other additional
(10:22):
risks in some shape or form.
So, for example, oppositions,which I think is quite a useful
thing that's been added in acouple of years ago.
So this is both in the sense oftrademark oppositions when
you're looking to file and youget to that opposition period,
and also in terms of patents.
So you know post-grantoppositions, or in the US you
(10:43):
know sort of post-grantoppositions and or in the us you
know sort of post-grant reviewsand iprs, that sort of thing,
and that's covering legalexpenses, not just obviously
it's not not damages, but youare on the flip, on the flip
side of that um, or it'sslightly more rare um, because
it's quite, it's quite adifferent risk profile, because
you're you're effectively givingsomeone a blank check, is.
It is giving someone legalexpenses cover to bring claims
(11:07):
against third-party infringers.
But crucially, at the pointthey take the insurance out,
they can't know there's athird-party infringer.
And that's one of the challengesthat we've been overcoming with
the insurance products isthere's the products for unknown
and known and it's knowingwhich products are right for the
problem, and quite often,actually, a client might come to
(11:28):
us thinking they're going tobuy this general, before the
event type insurance, butactually what they've come to
seek insurance for is somethingthey know about.
So it might be that a client,for example, is going to license
their product, so there mightbe a patent license that comes
along with that, and they saidwell, actually our competitor
(11:50):
has just been sued in Germany orthe US by this other competitor
and we're slightly worried thatwe're next.
So there's this known elementof risk which creeps in, and so
then our job is to find theright solution for that, because
there's one of one sort of tripwire, if you like, with these
insurances, which is for the bteinverted commas or the unknown
(12:12):
insurance, um, you have to givea declaration and there's a as
an exclusion which sitsalongside this, which says that
the, the management team and thecompany or the group don't know
that there's any risk which theunderwriter should know about.
And if they do know aboutsomething, it's also excluded.
(12:32):
So our job is then to find asolution for that known matter.
So you walk into a differentset of insurances which are very
, very kind of narrow specialisttools for specific problems, so
they can be really for anything.
So you mentioned productlaunches.
So it might be that you'veassisted a client with an FTO
(12:53):
and you might have assessed Xnumber of patents and you've
effectively cleared most.
But there might be a few whereyou're saying, well, there's
some chances here that claimscould read onto your product,
but there's ways of workingaround it.
You can do that working aroundand take the commercial risk,
but you can't eliminate all risk.
In that case we might sort ofwork with you and say, well,
(13:16):
actually we can structure somespecialist insurance around that
so the client can go ahead withtheir strategy and then ensure
the risk that it doesn't quitepan out as they planned.
And then you've got on theother end of the spectrum.
You've got insurance aroundlitigation and more sort of the
new kid on the block is using IPas collateral for loans.
(13:41):
So what we will do there islook to typically ensure um,
usually it will be a bank whowill be um, uh, basically using
the ip as collateral, probablyfor some early stage business.
That's going into mycommercialization phase, so I'll
take a breather, but there's,there's, there's more, but
there's.
(14:01):
There's quite a lot ofdifferent variants and it's a
case of picking the right toolout of the toolkit for the
problem.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
That's a great listing, actually, and I think I
quite like the idea of thatkind of product list rather than
oh, ip insurance, which isgenerally what we get asked In
terms of that kind of I know youdon't like the phrase, but in
terms of the before the eventstuff which is probably what
most people think about.
For, fundamentally, the firstquestion on insurance is you
know, I don't know what's goingto happen, how do we get some
insurance for it?
And I think when you boil itdown, it does come down to those
(14:32):
two key categories of eitherbeing sued or being infringed.
It's never really taken off.
I mean, my feeling is, you know, over the years I've been in it
for a while and it comes upevery few years and people look
at it, but it's never completelytaken off, which is unusual
because insurance normally doesseem to work.
Do you think there areparticular problems in that
market for it?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
I was going to ask you first actually, if it could
be cheeky, why you think it'snot worked.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
No, no, I'm happy to do that and I've kind of got a
kind of a real world answer fromsomething that somebody told me
.
So give me the answer, thatkind of.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
It's always nice to see input on the spot as well,
which is yeah, you love this,don't you?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
No, I think that the real-world one for me has always
been that it's just.
It's such a case-by-case thingand also realistically, exactly
just getting down to thenitty-gritty, what are you
actually insuring for?
So, is it for legal expenses,is it for damage?
And sometimes it's that lack ofclarity that people don't have
at the outset.
I think that's part of it.
(15:32):
Also, realistically, the momentyou do know what's going on,
you can actually come to a veryclear cut idea about what the
risk actually is.
So it's not, as you say, it'snot really an insurance thing
anymore, it's a risk managementthing.
That you might want to go to alitigation fund at that point
rather than an insurer, forexample, I don't know.
(15:53):
And then the external answer Igot is that the sample is too
small.
It's quite difficult toactually really come to any kind
of statistical views on riskwithout extra knowledge.
That's the two things.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
That's my two answers , and in fact that resonates at
all um, that, yeah, some some ofthose, some of those reasonings
do, um, and what I've spentalways but it probably is three
or four years doing now is isspending a lot of time, um, with
practitioners in sort of alldifferent guises, working out
(16:23):
really what, what would beuseful.
And coming back to what yousaid, and it's sort of the
conclusion I came to quitequickly.
But I think historically, ipinsurance has been presented as
this amorphous blob of a thingwhich is, it appears, quite
generic on the surface and Ithink quite a lot of
(16:44):
hand-holding and advisory workis required to help all parties
involved figure out where doesit fit in the greatest, you know
, the grandest scheme of, youknow, businesses ip strategy,
and it should always have aplace, but it takes a bit of
work to to find that role.
So a lot of our time istherefore spent with clients.
(17:08):
Actually, I mean, we've beenjust to sort of go back, we've
been housed a lot of theindustry standard IP tech, so
the free to use and theproprietary tools really, so
that when we're talking to theclient, we already know the
world that they're sitting in,so we can look at the pinch
points of risk.
And that's what we're talkingabout it's.
We know that you're working'retalking about.
We know that you're working inthis area.
(17:29):
We know this is the environmentand these are the challenges
and these are the specificthings that you're probably
already concerned about or youradvisor is concerned about.
But we can also see that andthis is where you have your risk
management strategy it might beyou've got other risk transfer
means.
It might be that you've gotpartners where you use contracts
to do some of that work for you, but actually insurance can
(17:51):
then sit on top of all that.
So it's being able to articulatethat, I think, is the key thing
, which sort of helps get overthat sort of lack of clarity
about what it's, what it's forand it's, I think, it's being
able to switch gears.
So, um, you know, our practicein particular is really focused
(18:14):
at ip advisors but, but quiteoften we will get c-suite
management sort of asking uswithout much knowledge about ip
insurance but also maybe only aheadline knowledge about ip, and
so we sort of have to switchgears to.
Well, we actually have to covera lot of bases here on the ip
front plus the ip insurance andrisk management front, and then
maybe sometimes even direct themto right.
(18:35):
We actually go and speak to apatent on this point or the
commercial ip lawyer on on thatpoint, um, but this is where
sort of ip insurance fits in.
So I think being able to uh, uh, sort of modulate really the
the technicality of thediscussion is is a real help in
moving forwards the conversationwhether this is useful tool or
(18:55):
not.
So it's very rare, in factincredibly rare, that I've had a
conversation where there'ssomething I've picked up off the
shelf and gone right, there'sthe solution for you done.
It never works that way.
Ip is messy, uh, usually theproblems are novel.
Solutions have to be novel, um,and I would say actually um
half the time or maybe more.
(19:15):
The discussion and the pricing,uh kind of discussion actually
crystallizes people's perceptionof the risk anyway, and they
kind of go do you know what wenow feel, that you've priced the
risk for us, so we'recomfortable to take that risk
without insurance.
And that's part of our jobactually is to help people sort
of make a decision what to do.
(19:36):
What I would say is there is acultural difference in approach
approach.
So, uh, two binaries that wequite often work with are uk
(19:56):
clients and lawyers and usclients and lawyers extremely
different approaches, um, as youcan imagine, uh, the us
approach is far more, um,commercially aggressive, um, and
that means in terms ofnegotiating risk transfer.
They're far more aggressive inmandating insurances to put in
place so that you know, ifpossible they push down the
supply chain, the risk tosomeone else, and they've got to
go and get insurance.
(20:16):
So it's more prevalent in theUS to have insurances in place
for IP.
But also, I think there's aslightly different perceived
risk environment.
I think most corporates in theUS of a certain size have
probably dealt with some sort ofnon-practicing entity claim and
that triggers certaindiscussions at board level about
getting insurance, at least forpatent infringement, which then
(20:38):
opens up a further discussion,and that's less common, I think,
in the UK unless that company'sgot a large footing in the US
and they've had sort of concerns.
So I think that creates somecultural differences in how
insurance is used.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Oh, there are so many rich seams here, lee, I don't
know which one to go down, soI'm going to you mine away,
gwilym, I will, I'll mine away.
I'm going to ask just quicklyon some of the kind of more
detailed things then, because,oh, actually no, first I wanted
to say, lee, I should have saidwhich is the beginning, this
(21:14):
isn't about professionalindemnity insurance.
I think that's that's fair tosay in the lewis.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
That's not your, that's not your bag professional
indemnity, not car insurance,not your content insurance.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
No, no so just just for the record all the things
that are the bane of my life and, um, yes, I do spend a lot of
time thinking about.
I never, ever think about ipinsurance.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Well, we've got to fix that, yeah yeah, um, the um
actually the us one's reallyinteresting, isn't it?
Um, I think it's um usually thecase that things happen there
and then they happen here.
So the NPE thing there areconcerns that's coming over here
much more, with the UPC, forexample, and we've actually done
(21:53):
a couple of podcasts with somepeople with concerns about that
and some of the kind of productsout there.
Oh, I think you know thelicense on termination people
and stuff like that.
You know some of these kind ofmitigations out there I guess
should we be looking at.
Are you looking to what'shappening in the states for
models for what you could beoffering over here?
Speaker 4 (22:13):
so we, uh, so I, I.
I again just come back to someof our first principles about
how we're approaching this.
I don't think it's possible forus to look at ip in a
jurisdictional vacuum.
I think for us to be effectiveand it's a difficult job is
we've kind of got to have thispanoptican view of every
jurisdiction, because prettymuch every week we'll have a
(22:36):
client that's got operations orproducts being sold or customers
in every jurisdiction thatmatters from an IP perspective,
and so we've got to know enoughto be dangerous to be able to
help with each of thoseterritories.
But you are right that the USoften leads the way with
adoption of some of these kindof practices and products.
(22:58):
And I think one thing that youmentioned on, you know
non-practicing entities and UPC.
So we're mindful that thereused to be a very specialist
product in the market which wasjust for cover for
non-practicing entities, whichwas very useful, actually very
(23:18):
effective.
So it was quite an activelyrisk-managed insurance product
with some specialist claimshandlers who sort of knew the
ins and outs of the patenttrolls and their behaviors.
And well, we know that one.
If you throw fifty thousanddollars it will just go away.
Uh, versus this one actually, um, yeah, you might need to sort
of uh, look to some prior artand sort of threaten, threaten
(23:40):
them, um, with some sort ofvalidation proceedings, um, and
that that's sort of come out themarket, unfortunately.
So what we've done is tried tocreate a new replacement, but
that was focused on the US.
And, yeah, we do know that NPEactivity is ticking up in
Germany and it might at somepoint spread beyond patents as
(24:01):
one of the main tools.
So there's a very novel case inthe open source world, for
example, what's going on in theUS at the minute called Sc and
vizio, and that that could, uh,really open the floodgates for
potentially even like an opensource kind of troll environment
.
So there's all these kind ofmoving parts at the minute, um,
in different jurisdictions.
(24:22):
So, yeah, we've got to be ableto help clients where forum
shopping might become an issue.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
So, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's a live matter at the
minute thank you, and also,you've mentioned quite a lot
about how you know you and otherinsurers, uh, do your own kind
of risk assessment, as, ofcourse, I'm sure you always
would.
Um, it reminded me of when youknow, when you try to decide
which way an election is goingto go, the best people to ask is
the bookies.
Um, maybe, maybe for maybe foran offline conversation.
(24:50):
I'd love to know what productsyou guys are using to help look
at the risk side on pre and tourfreight and things.
You need nothing to tell me onthe podcast, by the way, but
that's a really interestingproposition.
But you know, if you want toknow the real risks, ask the
insurers well, um, I'm sorry tothrow this back again, but so
back to the principles point.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
So it's, first and foremost, we want clients that
have got advice To borrow afriend's phrase on this topic,
and it doesn't sound too kind,but you'll get what I mean,
we're not in the business oftrying to ensure stupidity.
We, we want clients to takeadvice and be smart and know
(25:31):
what they're doing, um, withsome clarity and therefore why
they're using insurance.
What we don't want is insuranceto be used as this sticking
plaster, uh, because if there'san imperfect ip position, no
amount of insurance is going tofix that business.
So it's it's, it's a, it's nota useful tool in place of
getting proper advice.
I think that's, that's a key, akey message, um.
(25:54):
But in terms of the tools andhow we use them, I mean, we're
taking a 50 foot thousand view,um, and relying on, you know,
patent attorneys to get uscloser to the ground um, and you
know, I know a lot of patentattorneys actually don't like
using fto as the description ofof what that document does, and
we don't.
Normally I'm just using it as ashorthand, but for us that is
the perfect risk review documentwhich we can piggyback off um.
(26:17):
But yeah, we, we um haveonboarded um, you know, the like
I say the industry I won't namenames, but the main industry
standard tools across all iptypes to help us make that.
I guess you could call it aquick and dirty assessment
initially, so we can have anidea about.
You know, let's say, from a red, amber, green kind of
standpoint, where does thatclient's problem sit?
(26:39):
Um, a particular issue?
Um, but we're not pretending tobe ip practitioners taking the
job of ip lawyers absolutely not.
Our job is to use those toolsto be ip practitioners taking
the job of ip lawyers absolutelynot.
Our job is to use those toolsto be able to interface with the
problem.
Um, so when we do these riskreview, um discussions with
clients, yes, we, we will.
If we found something where wethink that might be a concern,
(27:02):
we'll flag it, but always withthe caveat that we're not giving
you advice on this point.
You've got your ip advisor.
They're the ones that should'renot giving you advice on this
point.
You've got your IP advisor.
They're the ones that should begiving you some guidance on
this.
And yeah, so we're not.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
We're not taking um any ip as lawyers jobs here no,
no and um, honestly, I think I Ithink there's risk attached to
assessing risk, so I'm reallyhappy to share that and
definitely share that risk ifI'm not really stressful I think
this is this is where I thinkinsurance can be quite useful
for a practitioner, becausethere are ways and means of us,
(27:38):
the insurance industry, workingwith IP professionals.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
That takes the heat out of that advisory work.
So, you know, you might have aclient where you've got like,
say, we go back to an FTO kindof issue and there's a product
launch.
You can set out all thedifferent permutations of what
might happen should the clientproceed with A, b, c or D
(28:01):
strategy and then being able tosort of then take that to the
next level and be able to add onto that.
Well, actually there is thisother risk mitigation set of
tools that you can use to dealwith some of these risks and
that might enable that client toactually have the confidence to
progress with that strategy.
It's probably something that'sreally useful.
(28:23):
And being able to offhand therisk on that discussion to to us
or you know, some other brokeror insurer um is probably quite,
quite useful because you'veadded some value to the client
and you.
You might have helped them um,to use our tagline remove a
barrier to investing in thatinnovation um, and I think
that's what we're trying to getto with with.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
What we're doing is enable that that to happen,
which I think historicallyhasn't been done effectively
thank you, but I think I'mnearly done, lee, because I'm
well, I got this rich seams, butI'm going to go for one more,
which is, um, I think you'vementioned a couple of kind of
the more the additional tools inyour toolkit, as it were,
(29:04):
beyond the kind of the aimauthors blob stuff.
One of them was collaterals on.
I'd use a collateral on theloan, but if I may, I want to
talk about the M&A one inparticular, because I think that
I know you and I've chattedabout that before and that
sounded quite interestingbecause that's extremely focused
but also extremely relevant.
So can you just talk throughquickly what you're ensuring
(29:25):
there and how that works?
Speaker 4 (29:29):
So this is a really interesting area for a few
reasons.
So in the M&A space what'sdeveloped over the past is about
20 well, let's say it's beenabsolutely rapidly increased in.
In use is a product calledwarranty indemnity insurance in
mna transactions and effectivelywhat that product does is shift
(29:52):
the risk of a breach of thewarranties in a in a purchase
agreement away from the sellerand onto an insurer.
So, theoretically, if you know,the buyer buys a business, gets
under the hood post-completionand realises, yep, this isn't
quite what we thought theremight be.
I don't know, might be a taxrisk.
There could be a I don't knowchain of titles IP problem that
(30:14):
rears its head.
Instead of suing the sellers,they effectively sue the insurer
instead, so it takes the heatout of the transaction.
Uh and um.
Also, if you've got, you know,innovative spaces, you've
probably got the seller'smanagement carrying on, so you
don't want to be suing your uh,your r&d specialist going
forward.
That's not going to make for ahappy ship.
But one problem that that arosein this environment was if you
(30:39):
have, let's say, life sciencetransactions or deep tech
transactions or anything whereip is really at the core music,
creative industry is another onethey get quite complex quite
quickly and the risk becomesobviously very narrowly focused
on things like title validityand infringement.
And quite often we see thatinsurers weren't happy to insure
(31:05):
those transactions.
Quite often there would beproblems found in those
transactions in one of thosebuckets of risk, and sometimes
the diligence scope wasn'talways quite adequate, to speak
to the risk entirely tiling.
Get everyone a clearer pictureabout what that does.
So what we've spent time doingis finding a way to get those
(31:28):
transactions insured and againit's it's, it's trying to find a
way to help a buyer get morecomfortable to progress that
transaction.
So what we've seen, seencommercially over the past
couple of years after COVID, isthat buyers on the private
equity, vc and corporate frontshave all been more cautious.
So they're doing more DD,taking fewer risks.
(31:50):
So they're looking at insurancemore and more to shift the risk
over.
So very long winded way ofsaying what we've started doing
has been quite interventionistin those transactions.
So I'll give you a couple ofexamples.
So, um, we had a um in the lifesciences space, a transaction
where, um it, there was a quitesubstantial upfront um
(32:13):
consideration and very, verysubstantial post-completion
milestone payments.
Um, you know, should thatclient get to uh sorry, target,
get to certain umcommercialization points, the
buyer had actually done a really, really solid FTO and had
identified patterns that wererisk.
So this becomes a negotiationpoint then.
(32:34):
So the buyer will say, well,we've got this risk now, when we
acquire this business and it'sit's gonna, you know,
potentially crystallize and it'sa one product business if we
don't have the ability to sellthis product as well, we've just
basically wasted all our money.
So it's high stakes stuff, andtypically that would
historically be uninsurable, andthe buyer might go back to the
(32:55):
sellers and say, well, do youknow what?
Take X amount off the purchaseprice so they lose money.
Or they might say, well, do youknow what?
Take X amount off the purchaseprice, so they lose money.
Or they might say well, theother way of doing this is you
indemnify us if this goes wrong.
So then the seller's sort ofsitting there with the big
liability sat on their books.
So what we've done in thosecircumstances is we've actually
pulled in patent attorneys intothe space to help sorry, outside
(33:22):
of the buyers of the patentattorneys, we pulled in other
patent attorneys to kick thetires on the process and help
the insurers come up with astrategy on how to ensure that
risk so that, effectively, thatFTO work gets affirmatively
insured, so it shifts the heatout of the transaction away from
the sellers and buyersnegotiation on to insurer.
(33:43):
What's the key bit to this,though, is back to that we're
not insuring a stupidity point.
The buyer and their patentattorney has got to have a solid
risk management strategy inplace and post-completion plan
to try and mitigate that risk.
And that's where I think theinteresting collaboration that
happens between what we're doinginsurance and what the patent
attorney's role is in thesetransactions, and that's what
(34:06):
makes this work.
And so we have had some reallyquite interesting examples where
certain transactions might nothave gone ahead if we hadn't had
this quite tight partnershipwith patent attorneys helping us
find a way through, I guess,the fog of war, if you could
call it um, in some of thesequite complex pattern areas, uh,
and that's really what we'retrying to do.
So it's quite often you mightsay that the risk is not
crystallized, it's not high riskat that point, but when the
(34:29):
buyer is looking at this quitesubstantial sum of money and
really pausing for thought, it'show do we get everyone
comfortable with that?
And this is where we're tryingto fit in.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
So, yeah, that's an interesting space so well, I've
got one eye on the clock.
As you know, that's my um, oneof my jobs on the podcast.
When I'm not asking questions,uh, when it's a subject that's
so far left field for me, um, Ican't dive in.
It's to keep it on the clock.
But I have come up with acouple of questions.
So, um, I know, I know williamand I have both got sort of like
hard stop just before 11o'clock, um, but I think we've
(35:02):
got a few minutes maybe for meto dive in and ask a couple of
us, if that's okay.
These aren't going to bedifficult ip or insurance
questions, because I'm I do theelephant in the room questions.
So, so the first one is quiteinterested in your story.
Uh, so, if I remember, rightback to when we started this 35,
40 minutes ago, minutes ago,you started off as a solicitor,
yeah, yeah.
Now I don't want to call you aninsurance broker.
(35:24):
I don't know if that's theright thing to call you or not,
but that's the world that youwork in?
Which skills do you draw on themost?
Do you still see yourself as asolicitor who happens to be
working in the world of IPinsurance, or are you sort of a
full-on insurance person?
Speaker 4 (35:41):
um, it's really difficult.
So half the time I feel acomplete imposter in all worlds.
Um, um, yeah, there's alwaysthis sense of uh straddling a
lot of different um disciplines,um, and trying to tie things
together.
So it it really does oftenrequire drawing on all all
(36:04):
potential kind of skills as alawyer, thinking as a, you know,
an insurance broker wait, youare, you're trying to, you're
always trying to find solutionsand try and find a way for uh
insurers to get comfortable.
So you end up having to be adiplomat um, half the time as
well.
So it's, it's bringing togethera number of different skills,
but from the sort of the sort ofyou know, sort of using your
legal skills.
(36:25):
Um, you're working on m&atransactions, we are negotiating
around um purchase agreementsand you know the basic stuff
understanding what warranties doand indemnities and, um, how to
structure an insurance product.
It kind of you do kind of getto keep your skills sharp, but
you know we are further awayfrom the coalface.
(36:47):
So knowing where to pass thatbuck back to you know, in this
case you guys to deal with thecomplex stuff is, yeah, is key.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
And actually you've segued nicely into my second
question because you said aboutthe distance you are from the
cold face.
So in my world, kind of leadingSEPA as I do, sepa membership
organisation, patent attorneys,that's my circle, yeah.
And then, moving out from that,think about it as kind of like
a planetary kind of experience,if you like, you get those other
professions that have arelationship or an association
(37:19):
so accountants clearly have arelationship from that.
Think about it as kind of likea planetary kind of experience,
if you like you get those otherprofessions that have a
relationship or an associationso accountants clearly have a
relationship um marketeers,those kinds of things hadn't
really thought about whereinsurance brokers fit in this
great sort of um planetarium ofof associated professions.
How do you manage thoseconnections?
How do you build connectionswith patent attorneys and how do
(37:40):
you sort of manage that set ofrelationships?
Speaker 4 (37:44):
The patent attorneys, I think, are a slightly more
tricky one, because I think thatthey're maybe inherently a bit
more sceptical about insuranceand, to be honest, you can just
imagine going to a dinner partyanyway or any sort of social
event, and someone asking, whatdo you do?
And you say, say, insurance.
It quite often is aconversation killer, just right
there.
So, um, quite often you're justthinking creatively on how to
(38:08):
engage in a discussion where youdon't actually mention the
dirty word insurance at all,where possible.
Um, but, but really coming backto what I said earlier, um, I
think this is about meeting thedifferent professions on home
turf where possible, so knowingreally what are the key issues
you might be advising yourclient on at the minute that are
(38:29):
quite topical and where do wethink you know patentees might
wish that they could offersomething else and be able to
have that discussion.
I think that's really key andyou know, we all know that I'm
definitely quite geeky.
That but also I know thatpatentings are quite geeky and
trying to trying to engage insome of those geeky interests
which they inherently have, Ithink I think helps.
So, yeah, trying to trying tobridge together some of those
(38:50):
like technical points and justsort of.
Again coming back to trying tobe a diplomat, I think it is
it's key.
No, no, your audience yeah,yeah, that's.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
That's probably the great point, isn't it?
Know your audience.
So, lewis, we're coming to theend of time now.
Thank you so much for um forguesting on the podcast for us.
It's um, and I know this onewe're going to have really well
with our pat and tony listeners,who perhaps haven't thought too
closely or too much about theworld of ipn insurance, so, um,
so they've got this to lookforward to.
But we always end the podcastwith some kind of tangential
(39:22):
question.
It might be related tosomething that we've said and
it's always my job to come upwith that and, rather annoyingly
for me, I've come up with two,and I don't know which one to
use Gwilym.
So Gwilym one's reallyChristmassy-ish, and the other
one is sort of quite related tothings we've been talking about
and might be a bit, pat and Tony, geeky-ish.
Which way do you want me to go?
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Well, looking at knowing your audience, if my
two-year-old were listening andI said, do you want to hear
about Christmas or insurance,I'm afraid she'd say Christmas,
got it Okay.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
So in the event that Beth might listen to this, or
one of my many grandchildren asyou know, let's do the the
christmas here, so peoplewouldn't have heard this,
because I think you said it sooff mic just before we started
recording.
But I'm a bit concerned becausethe light in the room that I'm
in makes me look a bit beetrootyand you said I don't look like
a beetroot other than in shape Ifeel bad.
(40:15):
I feel bad so I'm gonna ask you,and then I'm gonna ask lewis,
what is your favourite Christmasvegetable?
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Christmas vegetable?
Oh, sprouts, obviously sprouts.
I hate sprouts, I hateeverything about them, but I
think that they embody Christmasin the way that people don't
really latch on to.
We did a gig once, a Christmasgig, and we called it Sprout
Because I felt it was becausealmost everything else is sorry.
You've got to be going here.
I was thinking about Christmassongs as well.
Actually, there's a Christmassong about almost everything.
(40:41):
Now you know, if you thinkeveryone's got every angle going
, I don't think there's been oneabout sprouts yet.
So, as an aside, not only is itmy Christmas vegetable, I think
it's an absolute huge candidatefor a major Christmas hit.
Well, maybe we should do that.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Perhaps that's something we could work on
together.
Two IPs and a sprout that's,perhaps that's something we
could, um, we could work ontogether.
Two ips and a sprout yeah, twosprouts in a pod yeah, it works.
Come on, lewis, so you musthave a favorite christmas
vegetable.
You look like the sort ofperson who really loves a
christmas vegetable.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
I don't know what to say to that.
Um, I well, I'm, I'm withwilliam, I'm gonna one up it.
Um, it's gonna be sprouts witha lot of butter, garlic and
bacon.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Fancy sprouts, fried sprouts, yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
No, I'll take that.
Are you going to?
Speaker 1 (41:28):
ask me.
Are you going to ask me?
Yeah, go on, Lee.
What's your favourite Christmasdish?
Speaker 3 (41:31):
I'm just going to build on the experience because
I'm with Lewis.
So for years now I've beenfrying my sprouts with a little
bit of garlic and bacon andbutter.
But last year I've been fryingmy sprouts with a little bit of
garlic and bacon and butter butlast year I had a cheese sauce
and that transformed even.
I do love cauliflower cheeseand I didn't have any
cauliflower in the house atChristmas.
I thought let me try sort of aBrussels sprout cheese and it
(41:53):
was amazing.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
I see and I'm guessing you have all the
windows and let that smell waftdown the road so that everyone
knows that not only have you gotthe best lights but you got the
best sprouts if you say so, umI you know, of course I.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
I have this ongoing issue with um nasal polyps, so I
have amnesty.
I can't even say it, I can'tsmell at the moment, so I'm not
even going to appreciate thechristmas smells, this christmas
oh no, I'm sorry to hear thatyeah, yeah, no sense.
Sense of smell.
Lewis, thank you so much forcoming on.
It's been a pleasure having youon, gwilym.
I will see you on the nextrecording, which is fairly soon
in fact.
We've not got too long to waitThree hours yeah.
(42:31):
But we'll just remind ourlistener that if he or she wants
to leave a nice sort of reviewon the podcasting platform of
their choice, then it'll helpother people find the podcast.
And also we're hoping thatLewis is going to plant this
around all of his variousinsurance contacts so that we
break the world of insurance.
We'll see you next time.
(43:09):
The End.
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