Elevation Legal Founder Jamie Lyford has teamed up with Peter van Bruchem to establish new Innovation and Commercialisation services firm Elevation Corporate.

The focus of Elevation Corporate is to assist its clients from all sectors to extract value from ideas, innovations and intellectual property.

Elevation Corporate will effectively extend the range of support available to Elevation Legal’s clients past the provision of legal advice, documentation and representation to strategic, commercial and policy advice and assistance.

For more information please visit the website for Elevation Corporate.

Elevation Legal has expanded its team with the appointment of Peter van Bruchem as Senior Lawyer.

Peter has significant intellectual property, commercialisation and business development experience. Peter worked as a senior adviser to the Western Australian Government on the administration and commercialisation of government owned IP and innovations.  Peter has written and presented extensively on the management and commercialisation of IP and was the primary author of the Western Australian Government’s Intellectual Property Policy and Best Practice Guidelines.

Peter has worked as a freelance IP and commercialisation adviser to government agencies, universities and private companies both in Australia and the United Kingdom. Peter was an approved Intellectual Assets Consultant with the Scottish Intellectual Assets Centre.  Peter has also worked as a Business Development Manager in a UK University and has also been an adviser and mentor to high tech ventures.

Jamie Lyford, Director of Elevation Legal said about the appointment “I am very pleased that Peter has joined our growing team, expanding both our capacity to service our client’s needs and the breadth of experience within the firm”.

Elevation Legal’s Jamie Lyford is amongst 28 other lawyers throughout Australia recognised for his contribution to the arts with the announcement yesterday (Tues 30 March 2010) of the Arts Law Centre of Australia’s ‘Arts Law Pro Bono Award 2009′.  For more information see the ministerial media release at:  http://www.communities.nsw.gov.au/assets/pubs/media/arts/100330_lawyers.pdf

Elevation Legal is pleased to announce its  inclusion in the 2010 edition of Doyle’s Guide to the Australian Legal Profession (see: http://doylesguide.com/index.html). Doyle’s recognises the innovation culture of Elevation and its clients and has this to say about Elevation’s unique service offering:

‘Re-inventing the Perth small firm model by turning it “virtual”,
Elevation Legal’s Jamie Lyford is the emerging force
within the state’s smaller firms. Aligned in both style and
marketing efforts with start ups and information technology
entities the firm has already established a reputation for well
priced licensing and commercialisation work.”

Read the detailed abridged report on the IP profession at: http://tinyurl.com/yhkbkld

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and IP Australia (IPA) have commenced a 12-month online trial of Peer-to-Patent Australia which is designed to improve the patent examination process by engaging the public in submitting relevant prior art to assist in the examination of patent applications.  With the consent of the patent applicants, Peer-to-Patent Australia will post up to 40 patent applications in the areas of business methods and computer software on their website for public inspection for 90 days.  During this period, members of the public may review these applications, make comments and submit prior art references.  Amongst these public submissions, the panel of reviewers at Peer-to-Patent Australia will select the top 10 prior art submissions for each patent and put them forward to IP Australia for consideration in its examination process.  This process is aimed at assisting the patent examiner in his/her role of assessing the novelty and inventiveness of the patent application –  the examiner retains his/her role of deciding whether the patent is granted or not.

This trial process intends to increase the rigour of the patent examination process to improve the quality of issued patents.  IPA and QUT suggest that by engaging experts in the community the project will enhance the quality of issued patents and result in more robust patents with stronger claims that hopefully are less likely to be challenged – either at the time of litigation or during licensing negotiations.

To find more information or take part in the project, visit:  www.peertopatent.org.au

If you have Patent licensing and negotiation queries please contact us at info @ elevationlegal dot com or 08-9488 3355.