Event Report: TCCE Annual Conference – “Culture, Creativity & The Academy – Exploring the New Normal”

Chris Blincoe of the University of East Anglia attended the The Culture Capital Exchange’s (TCCE) annual conference on behalf of PraxisUnico.

TCCE is a company promoting the exchange of universities’ knowledge and expertise with London’s cultural and creative sectors. On 15th July 2015 I attended their Annual Conference at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama as a Praxis Unico representative. The Conference brought together representatives from higher education, the arts, cultural and creative sectors and the wider worlds of policy and business under the theme; Culture, Creativity and the Academy: Exploring the New Normal.

Conference Report 2015: Soft IP

A report from the parallel session on Soft IP delivered by Sue Ratcliffe, IP Counsel, Swansea University, and PraxisUnico Conference Committee member; Naomi Jacobs, Senior Research Associate at Lancaster University, and Mike Butler, Director of the Aston Centre for People and Organisations (ACPO), and Founder and Director of The TRANSFORMATION Project, Aston Business School.

Sue kicked off the session and talked us through the various soft IP rights that can exist, including copyright, trade marks, designs, goodwill etc. and put this in context by describing the inter-relationship of these rights using the Glastonbury Festival as an example.

The session aimed to communicate that IP has many facets and a lot of the rights inter-relate. However it is vital that there is awareness of the rights both so they can be used and the problems that third party rights could present if there is lack of awareness of Soft IP and its value.