Ever thought you have a great invention or idea and were not sure how to go about protecting your creation, or even how to commercialise it into a profitable venture … well who are you going to call? The highly skilled technical team at OxygeneIP who know how to breathe air into your ideas.
The team at Oxygene IP Dr Nigel Parker, Dr Carolyn Rolls and Dr Paul Warden-Hutton bring highly specialist and technical expertise to their roles as leading patent and trademark attorneys.
Oxygene IP has undergone a transformation recently, rebranding the practice to its new name, but the partners have slowly been firming up their position in the business for some time. The practice is located at Level 1, 70 Doncaster Road, North Balwyn Village.
Dr Nigel Parker has been at the firm since 2008 and Dr Paul Warden-Hutton since 2013. The firm’s three partners deliver on protecting people’s creations.
The team at Oxygene IP assist clients with registering patents, designs and trademarks, and copyright matters.
All three partners hold PhDs in a technical discipline, which they advise is standard in this industry. Nigel Parker has a PhD in biotechnology, Carolyn Rolls holds a PhD in chemistry and a degree in law, and Paul Warden-Hutton holds a PhD in medical physics.
The profession can be considered somewhat exotic as there are less than 1000 patent and trademark attorneys in Australia when compared with about 14,000 lawyers in Victoria alone.
“Everyday we look at people’s inventions and how to protect them with a patent or design registration,” Carolyn Rolls says.
“We have people contacting us from all over Australia and overseas talking to us about their inventions or proprietary information.
“Filing for a patent is very difficult because the invention needs to be fully described and has to be drafted according to the Patents Act. Furthermore, we need to follow the precedents of cases dating back 400 years. Some clients may want to file their patent overseas, so we need to work across borders as well,” Carolyn Rolls says.
A patent can be enforced for up to 20 years and then the IP becomes public property for others to benefit from the invention. A design registration can be protected for 10 years, whereas a trademark may be renewed forever.
When you ask the three attorneys of interesting inventions and ideas they have worked on to protect, their experience is as vast as the ideas that have been brought before them.
Carolyn Rolls has worked on plant patents among other endeavours.
“When a new plant comes out, it may potentially be protected by patents. I’ve worked on patents for apples and tulips. It can be important for a new commercial variety to be protected. This is valuable intellectual property and affects how the plants are commercialised by a business,” Carolyn says.
Nigel Parker says that COVID encouraged a lot of new ideas among budding inventors.
“The famous economist Kondratiev observed when the economy goes down, innovation goes up. During COVID we saw a lot more inventions coming to us as people’s future had been freed up.
“It has been very exciting for us to have worked on patent protection for COVID vaccines. When we go to the chemist and see one of the vaccines and we know we have looked after the patent registration is a major thrill to us,” Nigel Parker says.
“A particularly interesting idea we had come to us was from a client who invented a mechanism for a robot based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings.”
The three specialist attorneys are supported by five administration staff to ensure that clients’ ideas are well supported from initial contact through to delivery of the protection mechanism they are seeking.
“Simply put, trademarks are deceptively simple; patents are inherently complex and design registration is a matter of what you see is what you get,” Caroline Rolls says.
So whether the idea is IT based, DNA or genetics related, mechanical or chemical, the experts at Oxygene IP have all the qualifications and expertise to breathe life into an invention to protect it and take it to the next level of commercialisation and profitability.
Oxygene IP together with Salzano’s Delicatessen, Fletchers North Balwyn and Signorelli’s Fruit and Vegetable Shop and the North Balwyn Village Traders Association are sponsoring the North Balwyn Village Christmas Giveaway – 20 x $100 gift vouchers which will be won by 20 lucky people who just want to love and follow the North Balwyn Village. Make sure you register here to win one of these great prizes: https://balwynnorthvillage.com.au/merrychristmas2022/