Guarding Your 'Recipes for Success' With James & Wells

Mention the word ‘invention’ and what springs to mind is usually a mechanical gadget – a new mousetrap – or a fancy new ‘app,’ so we don’t generally associate the word with food. However, the food and beverage industry is rife with innovative thinking, and as food perishes, anything that can make it last longer and remain fresh and nutritious will be of major interest to the industry and consumers.

New Zealand is as active as any nation in this area, and the success of our Manuka honey products, for example, is well known, so if you find a new food product that people like and will pay well for, and your future is assured. Or so you’d think.

But there’s a trap.  Developing a delicious new recipe for a quince and kumara jam is only the first step.  There is no way to guarantee you’re the only one with the idea or who has managed to turn it into a product or a process that works. If you don’t make the effort to check, you may learn you have a competitor with the same product or technology only when you take it to market.  At that point, if the competitor has done their homework and protected their own intellectual property (IP), you may find that you’re barred from selling a product or using a process you’ve invested significant resource into developing.

It’s called Freedom to Operate (FTO).  You get it when you have established that your products and processes aren’t captured by your competitors’ IP rights. And just because there’s no identical product in the market doesn’t mean there’s no patent!

It is wise to check out the market and the patent landscape for something similar before you throw a lot of effort and resource into the development of your innovative new product, and you need to know if you risk infringing any third-party rights so you can minimise the risk to your commercial venture. A simple FTO search may be all that’s required to identify whether any major obstacles are in the way.

Food is big business. Blessed with climate and soils that support all manner of food production and a strong research community, New Zealand has all the attributes to lead the world in food and beverages R&D.  The risk – and the country’s history bears this out – is that we need to be vigilant around keeping our recipes close to our chest, proactive about bolting down and commercialising our IP, and diligent about FTO in the markets we are pursuing.

James & Wells has a dedicated food and beverage team who can help light the pathway to your tech breakthrough and take the risk out of your new venture, so for further information on their intellectual property services,  and NZ copywright law please visit the website at http://www.jaws.co.nz .