British Standard 8538 For Invention Promotion Companies Launched

Online, March 4, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Intellectual Property is absolutely vital to the future of the UK economy and is the cornerstone of any new enterprise. It is therefore really important that the new ideas are recognised and protected so that they can be used to best advantage. Resources for exploiting new ideas will always be scarce so it is important that the resources that are available are applied to the ideas that have a real prospect of succeeding.

The process of commercialising new ideas has always been challenging and it is vital that good ideas are not wasted by being the subject of incompetent or fraudulent activities. There are many reasons why new ideas do not succeed and the most common ones are that the idea is not in fact new or that it is technically unsound. Simple checks at the outset can avoid more serious disappointment later, but also it avoids wasting those scarce resources on ideas that won't succeed.

TBB has always operated on the basis of giving an unbiased opinion on the likely success of any idea rather than setting false expectations. This may lead to more ideas being rejected at an early stage but TBB believes that this is preferable to encouraging people to spend money on ideas that cannot succeed.

It is a sign of an unscrupulous organisation that they will advise that almost any idea submitted to them can succeed and they rarely bother to carry out any checks before encouraging the development of the idea. At best this leads to disappointment but can often lead to people pointlessly spending thousands of pounds in fees and development activities.

TBB has campaigned for many years for such a standard and is pleased to have been associated with the creation of BS 8538 Specification for the provision of services relating to the commercialization of intellectual property rights. We hope that it will be an important component in encouraging the development of innovative new businesses and products for the UK.

The standard is available at the BSI shop, go to http://shop.bsigroup.com/BS8538 for more details.