Exciting News From James & Wells

With James & Wells’ commitment to champion the food and beverage sector, last month, their Food and Beverage team were down in Palmerston North for the New Zealand Institute of Food Science & Technology (NZIFST) 50th anniversary conference. As sponsors of the event, the team were on hand to answer any intellectual property, commercial and export queries. James & Wells were also excited to announce that the head of their Food and Beverage team, Senior Associate Peter Brown, has been elected onto the NZIFST Auckland branch committee.

As Peter reports, capturing the value in food tech is a recipe for success and by looking beyond just protecting your turf and competitive edge, patents can be used proactively to build business opportunities and further growth.

From their annual sponsorship of Fieldays, James & Wells report that although there is no denying that agriculture is still a huge part of New Zealand’s economy, it’s not necessarily agriculture as we used to consider it. The success of James & Wells’ clients at this year’s and previous Fieldays reveals innovation in agriculture is allowing wealth to be created from ideas and is a definite boost for the Kiwi economy. James & Wells applauded the stand-out innovation and successes at the 2015 Fieldays, including client Danz Zappz, and this year’s James & Wells IP Service award winners from St Paul’s Collegiate School. The enterprising young students won $3000 worth of intellectual property advice, which will help them secure ownership of their IP for the feed bin system and investigate options for leveraging it.

The James & Wells team also looked at past winning Fieldays ideas and where they are at now, including LiquidStrip, Ubco and Kalvin Singh. James & Wells Associate, Jason Tuck, who attended Fieldays this year, says it’s not just those winning the James & Wells sponsored awards that there is a connection with. “It’s great to see a range of clients not only winning other awards this year, but coming back and building on their previous successes –  growing and moving forward.” Client Dan Hall of Danz Zappz walked away with the Vodafone Innovation Technology Award with his fence detector app. James & Wells Senior Associate Jonathan Lucas says Dan approached the firm for advice on how to patent his idea; a one-of-a-kind smartphone app called ‘Fence Detective’ that detects whether an electric fence is live or not. The discussion resulted in an IP strategy which included patent filings, trademark protection and commercial considerations to ensure Dan could make the most of his idea.

With the big picture in mind, future plans will see James & Wells help to commercialise the app, which is currently available at the Google Play Store. The lightbulb moment occurred when Dan came across an electric fence on his farm out in Dargaville and, not knowing whether it was on or not, had to call a farmer to find out. Realising that there must be a more hassle-free way, the thought led to the conception of the app. Since Fieldays, Dan has had more than 1500 visits to his website. He is currently focusing on offshore markets and corporate businesses, with work also underway on an iPhone app, as currently the app only works for Android.

For more information please go to www.jaws.co.nz .