Sheffield Inventors Group

Joining the inventors clubs that I sponsor in Blackburn and Manchester, and the ones that I helped to start in Leeds, Huddersfield and Liverpool is the new Sheffield Inventors Group. The group will launch at 18:00 on 3 April 2006 with a talk by Miles Rees of the Patent Office at Sheffield Central Library in Surrey Street.

The group will be run very much like the others. There will be two classes of members: inventors from anywhere in South Yorkshire and service providers (people who offer business and professional services to inventors) from anywhere.

Now that we have a fair measure of organization in the North we should soon be in a position to negotiate substantial benefits for Northern inventors such as discounts for searches and library services, legal advice and representation, patent and trade mark agents' services, prototyping and IP insurance.

Michael Sandys of Kirwans and Kate Reid of Pemberton Reid and I have already giving free workshops and clinics. So, too, has Chis Hemingway of patent agents Bailey Walsh. Nadio Granata of PNG Marketing gave a lot of input to the Huddersfield inventors as did product development consultant Richard Hall of PD-M International Ltd. On the financial side Iain MacLeod of IP Insurance Services is already working on a group IP insurance policy for members of any of the Northern inventors' clubs. After that, we shall try to arrange networking events with angels and VCs.

Details of these events are or will be on the "Events" page of www.hip.org.uk. We hope to help make you all rich men and women. We shall certainly do our best.