At Venturenomix our primary task is to secure our clients’ R&D grant funding.

We know a lot about grant funding, but we also know when to bring in one of our expert partners. In this series of six blogs, we’ve teamed up with IP Attorney Jason Teng at Potter Clarkson to take a look at some of the IP-specific challenges we often come across in our R&D funding applications.

How can I use IP to evidence my proposed innovative technology goes beyond the current state of the art?

‘Beyond state-of-the-art’ is a crucial factor in the assessment criteria of all R&D grants. Funders want to see ‘game-changing’ innovation – not ‘step-change’ innovation.

This is particularly true of the Smart Grant (IUK) and EIC Accelerator (Horizon Europe), where success rates are lower than 10% overall. Demonstrating your innovation goes beyond the current state-of-the-art is even better than stating it and IP will always help!

From a grant writer’s perspective

Alex says: “It is always a wonderful feeling when a client shares a patent application (pending) or patent (granted) that underpins the innovation I am writing an application for.

The level of technical and legal language in the patent application is gold-dust dust when proving the proposed technology is cutting-edge.

Quote the patent application reference number early in the application – ‘this
innovation project builds on technology (patent-pending XXXX) and seeks to… That
reference is very powerful and persuades the evaluators right from the outset that this is a serious application.”

From a patent attorney’s perspective

Jason says: “On top of filing a patent application, there are ways to accelerate processing of the patent application, such as the UK Intellectual Property Office’s Green Channel for environmentally friendly technologies.

This will help you quickly obtain a patentability opinion, or even secure an early grant of a UK patent, which provides an official stamp of approval that your technology is a gamechanger.

Another option for evidencing innovativeness is to commission a professional opinion from an IP legal advisor with the experience and expertise to assess the patentability of your technology.”

For more IP-led insights, check out our collaborative white paper.