Commissioned by the New Statesman
Trevor Baylis considers himself lucky. Unlike so many of his colleagues, he has been given the recognition he deserves for his inventions. Most inventors in the UK tend to get a raw deal, but according to Baylis, that’s all about to change.
In 2002, he set up a company to help inventors realise their potential and protect their genius. Trevor Baylis Brands (TBB) came to be as a direct result of Baylis himself feeling the heavy hand of corporate lawyers.
“Everybody thinks I’m an extremely rich man, but I was turned over like a turkey,” he says.
Remarkably, like so many other British inventors that have been bullied by huge corporations, Baylis isn’t bitter.
“The most important thing is to try and do something to ensure that it doesn’t happen again to somebody else. I asked myself, what else do I want? You can only wear one suit at a time. So at the end of the day, it isn’t about cash; it’s about principle… decency, that’s why I brought my team together.
TBB started off as an idea to have a British Academy of Inventors, a safe and secure place for innovators to go to for guidance and legal protection from ‘Intellectual Property’ (IP) theft. But the government had little appetite to invest in such a scheme so Baylis decided to go it alone.
Baylis Brands encourages inventors to come forward with their ideas in the safe knowledge that it would be handled with confidentiality and deference. The opposite of the BBC’s solution, ‘Dragon’s Den,’ a reality programme which Baylis describes as ‘destroying someone’s life for 15 minutes of television.’
One of the main objectives of TBB is to ensure that Intellectual Property is thoroughly protected and that there are no loop holes in the law, so inventors aren’t dragged into expensive legal suits which they will invariably lose. Baylis cannot emphasise this point enough.
“It might be designed for the floor, but we’ll make sure the patent covers the wall, the ceiling and even the toilet.”
“The future and the economy depend on inventiveness and creativity, so we have to recognise that inventions and especially patents are absolutely essential if you want to score off you’re competitor.”
“Wherever the product is created, the economy is likely to be affected should it be nicked. The only way we’re going to avoid that is by recognising our British patent office and having the UK, the ‘UK plc’ if you like, standing behind the lone inventor.”
A lack of faith in the government to step in when MNCs are manhandling its citizens has pushed Baylis in to leading a charge to remind the British institutions what they were set up for and to encourage cooperation between private, governmental and charitable organisations.
“At the moment, the DTI are just bums on seats and they are not really helping the people that go to them. In fact, the Design Council were one of the first organisations to turn me down [regarding the clockwork radio]. They said there wouldn’t be a need for it.”
TBB promises its applicants to analyse all possible routes to market, and perhaps as a consequence, receives on average six inventions a day. Baylis treats each and everyone with respect.
“If someone comes up to TBB with a peculiar shaped walking stick because the person has a peculiar shaped back, well, there might only be a requirement for 10 of these in the whole world, but my god, don’t it make a difference to those ten people.”
There’s a fine balance between social need and financial viability explains Baylis, and in the same vain as William Morris over 100 years ago, marrying up the beauty of the invention with a potential use is his biggest challenge. TBB is now working closely with the Patent Office, the British Library, the Office of Fair Trading, the Company Fraud Squad as well as the National Research Laboratories and over 250 industrial collaborators towards that end.
Baylis’s conversation consists mainly of bloke next door vernacular with intermittent soundbites. But after sifting through the media talk, it’s difficult not to be moved by his enthusiasm and his one true belief – that ‘Invention is the future.’ His ‘baby,’ as he would put it, is currently sitting on a number of inventions that are about to go to market. With the revenue generated, Baylis is hoping to push for invention to be integrated into the national curriculum as well as expand into helping innovators in developing countries.
Read edited version:
www.newstatesman.com/pdf/manufacturingsupp.htm
Filed under: Freeplay, Intellectual Property, Mosarrof Hussain, New Statesman, Patents, Trevor Baylis, Trevor Baylis Brands, Wind Up Radio | 4 Comments
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Dear Sirs
Read your article with interest in respect of Mr. Baylis. However, your writers should be aware (and this story is now public common knowledge and could have been researched easily) that Mr. Baylis was not ‘turned over like a turkey’. Not only did Mr. Baylis NOT make tax provision for payments he received (and then expected the company to do so for him) but he indemnified the company he sold his concept to against counter claims of the design of the technology. That company then had to settle a claim by Mr. Baylis’s friend who claimed HE had designed the product – a claim that was likely to be upheld and that Mr. Baylis agreed to settle. His continued ‘mantra’ is unfounded, untrue and reflects sadly on an individual who has the opportunity to help alot of inventors realise their dream.
Kind regards
Dear Miss Hole-Jones
Thanks you for your interest. Are you sure that Mr Baylis is referring to your company – Freeplay (who incidentally have made a killing on windup technology, the lamp, the radio, to name a few) – when he says he “was turned over like a turkey?”
I refer you to his statement to the UK government in 1998 (see below).
Mr Baylis clearly acknowledges that it was his own shortcoming as a manager that got him into trouble, something that might have been avoided if he was given the correct education or competent legal support (which unsurprisingly, he couldn’t afford).
Your comment is valid, but could you have missed the point that Mr Baylis is making – That the problem lies with the UK education system, not with corporate companies like Freeplay.
Perhaps it was unfair that a Freeplay employee should launch such a damning personal attack on Mr Baylis by masquerading as someone from the public domain, impartial to this matter. I’m sure you’ll admit that Freeplay themselves have cut many corners when it comes to tax (especially in places like South Africa and China) – it’s business, it’s the nature of the beast.
It is also important to understand that the product may have been a money spinner right from the start by the sheer nature of its design, but the free advertising revenue that was generated by a charismatic inventor such as Mr Baylis who genuinely wants to help marginalised people cannot be overlooked. It is this branding, the personality, the story behind the invention that makes it what it is today.
Warm Regards
Excerpt from the examination of witnesses on the state of science and technology in the UK on Wednesday 25th November 1998:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmselect/cmsctech/17/8112505.htm
Chairman: Most of you started as small companies. Those of you who have grown companies successfully, how have you done it? Are you good managers as well as inventors?
Mr Baylis: I said to you earlier that one of the things I discovered when I started inventing was not to give up the day job. I started my own swimming pool business about 30 years ago. It is a company that sustained itself by providing learner swimming pools for schools and we have made a living, we have not made a killing but we have survived and I have got my house on a delightful island etcetera, etcetera. The back of my house is my shed which I now call a studio, which sounds so much nicer and I can compose what I like for my pleasure. It just so happens that some of the things I compose are for a group of people who I have been associated with who are called disabled people. Most of these things are social inventions. These are inventions that you would be foolish to patent, but I did it for pleasure, not because I was carrying some religious artifact but because I enjoyed using my soldering iron. The outcome of that was a range of products called Orange Aids, over 200 products which were then stolen from me. There was a DHS report about my products which was very well-received. A bank then moved in on me and they gave me a 20 per cent stake in the company. I thought that sounded alright. That 20 per cent turned out to be 20,000 shares. They were not A shares but B shares. They put £1 million on my B shares and then they said, “Goodbye, Trevor”, and that is how the corporate sharks and the vulture capitalists turned over one Trevor Baylis who works in his shed and I said, “This is never going to happen to me again. I am not going to be turned over by the corporate villains that exist.” They call it good business when you turn over the little guy. The accountant says, “Thank God we have got rid of that little five per cent”, which is some poor soul’s income.
Chairman: You could say, Mr Baylis, that in fact it was your own ability or lack of your ability to manage your affairs that allowed this company to turn you over, to use your expression. If you had been aware of the type of shares you had been given—and I am not saying this necessarily as a criticism of you —
Mr Baylis: Precisely. I come back to my argument that none of us has the skills that we need. I was green. When I was a child my parents taught me to trust people and always to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Interesting reading. I doubt anybody could deny that the nature of Trevor Bayliss’s intentions are honest and good.
My personal feelings are that he should carry on just as he is, we need positive people.
Furthermore I back his most recent campaign regarding public toilets, having lived and worked in London from arriving here 12 years ago I can honestly say there is a huge lack of them. In addition we shouldn’t allow the government (or local councils) to apply the ‘..we have to charge for the service, maintenance etc’ type of argument to raise its ugly head, we pay taxes for things like this and thats where the money should come from. Let’s have no more paying for things we are taxed for.
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