John Coldham: Hello, my name is John Coldham and I am a director in the Intellectual Property team. Today, I am joined by Richard Joseph, to hear a bit more about IP protection from his perspective. Richard, welcome and thank you for joining us. Please can you start by telling us a little bit about Joseph Joseph.
Richard Joseph: Yes, sure. So I am one of the founders. We set the business up in 2003, myself and my brother, Antony. We are product designers. We started designing a range of products mainly in the kitchen area. We decided to focus on kitchen because it is full of life functional products which we could find sort of useful solutions around which suited us and suited our design style. Shoot forward 12 years and we have about 350 products in the range currently. We supply retailers all over the world in 104 markets and have a growing product range. We launch about 50 to 60 unique products a year. Everything is designed here in the UK, in London predominantly, and we produce mainly in the Far East, mainly in China. And as far as our design process goes, because it is obviously critical to intellectual property, it will take us about two years to design a product. Every product we launch has been on a two-year critical path to get to launch and that is everything from research right the way through to concept generation, development, tooling, prototyping, testing, testing, testing and launch. Takes about two years.
John Coldham: So a lot of work goes into such development. So I can only imagine your reaction when you see no doubt people have copied you over the years. You are a distinctive brand and a very popular brand and, therefore, people would like to mimic you to save themselves that two-year process. I assume you have seen some infringements? Tell us about what sort of infringements.
Richard Joseph: Yes, we have a huge problem with infringements and have done really. We started to take notice in 2010 when we had some very big problems with copy products hitting the market, particularly in Europe. We actually spent more money in 2010 on IP and protection than we did on design and, as a creative business, that is simply a sorry state of affairs. We have a huge problem with it. Predominantly it is coming out of the Far East, mainly China, and I have some stats. We have about 12 new cases a week so, on average, two a day of infringing products that we come across. We deal with on average about ten cases at any one time. So currently we have ten legal cases going on to do with product and brand infringement and counterfeit. The issues we have are mainly down to infringement of design and design registration and brand as well.
John Coldham: Have you found that any particular rights have helped you more than other rights in that process?
Richard Joseph: Yes. We design register predominantly. We do patent where possible but we are in the business of sort of fast-moving consumer goods and we find that design registration is quick so when we are coming to market with lots of new products it is a great way to offer a level of protection that means we have a piece of paper we can wave in front of people's faces to say we are protected and if you do not withdraw, we can go legal and we can go legal fast.
Obviously the patent process takes longer. We do do that where we have a truly inventive idea and we want to protect it. We know that we can protect it for a longer period of time. So, predominantly it is design registration and patents where possible.
John Coldham: So when you do have an infringement, you said you can wave a piece of paper in front of them, do you find that that works?
Richard Joseph: Yes. I think when we talk about actually when we come across infringes, depending on where they are, we will always start with the basic 'cease and desist' and we have an in-house legal team that will manage the basic 'cease and desist' letters and I would say that that works to an extent but, if we find that that does not work, we will get legal counsel involved very quickly, depending on where they are. So we will appoint local lawyers in places like China if that is where we need to tackle it and we will do it as quickly as possible.
Our attitude to it is to have – we see it very much as part of our day-to-day business. The registration part is all part of our design process and the infringement we accept is part of doing business. We do not accept it the way that it happens, we think it is stealing, we think it is profiting from our inventiveness, our creativity, our goodwill, free of charge and we do not like that, so we take a very robust attitude to that. Zero tolerance with regards to everybody and we do it as fast as possible and we will look to go legal if we are not getting anywhere and, of course, that happens regularly.
John Coldham: Have you had any successes particularly? You take on a number of people. Do you find there is anything in particular you can tell us about in terms of things that work, things that do not work so well?
Richard Joseph: Yes. I think the approach has to be, we have to be proactive. It is a problem that is not going away and so we believe in boots on the ground in places like China. So, we police all of the main trade shows. We go there with our local legal representatives and we will walk the shows, walk every single booth looking for copies and, as soon as we see them, we will go on, en masse and we will obviously take all the relevant documentation with us, but we tend to find that, in places like China, you are far better off as a sort of 'smash and grab' than you are trying to go legal.
So at trade shows etc, we will look to take products off the stands and we will let them worry about the legal issue around doing that, not us. So we like to think it is proactive. We will police websites like Alibaba, Tmall and eBay. We will sign up to newsletters from various factories and websites etc to find out first about the copies as they hit the market and we will talk to our network of distributors and customers and ask them to inform us if anything comes on the market. So we are as proactive as we can be to make sure that we are catching stuff before it hits the market and then, as soon as we find it, we get on and try and fix the problem.
John Coldham: I think there is a lot to be said for having a reputation for zero tolerance because I think it helps deter people. The trouble is, it is very hard to measure that as to how effective that has been because you will always be copied unfortunately, so you do not know how many people you have deterred. Do you feel that that zero tolerance has given you some feedback? Have you had feedback that it is working?
Richard Joseph: Hard to tell. I think if we visit China today we have had as many problems there as we have had over the last five years. You shut one door and three more open up. These factories, because we do a lot of plastic injection moulded products, when they copy, they are actually investing in a tool. So if you close them down, they will be keen to open up elsewhere so I would say that, in China, we just feel that we have to be proactive.
I think we have definitely seen a reduction of copies in the marketplace coming into Europe, coming into our key retailers in overseas markets and that might be to do with the growth of the brand and the reputation and that people know not to buy the rip-offs. We are also very keen on publicising any wins that we have. So, particularly when it comes to retailers, if we win a case with a retailer, we will look to publicise the fact to other retailers so that it deters them buying copy products. Sometimes they buy it not knowing they have bought infringing products. Other times they know willingly, depending on which market they are in, but we try and publicise as much as possible to deter that way.
John Coldham: I suppose that brings me on to my final question which is that you have talked a lot about – we are going to role reverse here – here is the lawyer asking you a question which is not about law. So the law works for you, different tactics in different markets and I think that is something that has to be right and the zero tolerance works I think as a strategy. You cannot always measure it but it is a good way of running a business such as yours. Presumably part of it, as you mentioned there at the end about education, about publicity, about presumably the virtues of buying the original, educating the consumers not to want the cheaper copies. Is there work you have done in that area?
Richard Joseph: Well I think we are always trying to. We spend an awful lot of time and investment developing a product we think is unique, it is well made, it is the right quality, it is food safe, it is all of the really critical things and we find a lot of the copy product out there cuts many of those corners, generally to chase a cheaper price. So we do not necessarily tell the consumers. We have to be very careful about talking direct to consumers and saying, look, this is a copy product and these are the problems with it and this is our product and this is what is great about it because it can be seen to be a negative marketing campaign and I think we would much rather just talk about what we are great at and keep the dirty side of the industry out of our marketing messages etc.
But, I think, if anything, the only thing I would say is that we try and talk about the virtues of our products and more and do it better and communicate it better. I am not sure it is a result of the copies but I guess we always try and do that.
John Coldham: Finally, one last question. If you had one thing to say – a lot of people listening to this will probably be designers, maybe starting out. Do you have one thing you would like to say to them? You are at the other end of that now with a very successful, world-famous business but they are just starting out. What one piece of advice would you give them?
Richard Joseph: I think build-in an approach to intellectual property and design protection right from the start. Do not ignore it because if you ignore it – and I think we did ignore it at the start – I think we thought there were other bigger issues to face – by the time you realise it is a problem it is too late. So what you can do is some very basic protection right from the very start because as soon as you have a successful idea, you will be benefiting from it but the copies will be chasing you very hard and fast. The world is a very small place, information is very free, very easy to get hold of.
They will be looking, they travel a huge amount, more than they used to as well, so they visit a lot of key markets, key cities, key stores. They are looking for the successful products that are out there. As soon as they see yours, and copy it, you will need to be ready to fight back and if you do not have protection, you will be in big trouble. And it can be a real threat to your business and everybody that works for you and your livelihood and all the rest of it.
So I would say, treat it seriously from the start. Look at some basic protection – you do not need to go crazy – that does not cost a fortune but make sure it is part of your design process right from the off.
John Coldham: Richard Joseph, thanks very much for joining us. I hope you found this podcast useful. We have produced a guide aimed at the non-lawyer, all about the designs, lifecycle and the different considerations at different points. Please contact us if you would like a copy. Thanks for listening.