Trevor Baylis – Branding the Future

04Apr07

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