STROUD SOFTWARE COMPANY REINVESTS IN R&D THANKS TO PATENT BOX SUCCESS

Cristie Software helps companies across the world recover and replicate critical systems.

The software marketed by the Stroud-based company was originally embedded into tape drives. The current owner saw the value in this software as standalone recovery software adding niche functionality to the data protection market. The software business demerged from the wider group and established global relationships with companies such as IBM and Dell which now market it globally.

This software has expanded over the years and is now used within Cristie for its recovery, migration and replication software.

Typically, a new feature within an existing product could take up to nine months in research and development, then into proof of concept and further development before releasing to the market.

This is elapsed time which includes a number of resources. If this was a new idea for which the company carried out research, development, prototype, patent and then included within a product it could be three to nine months of the initial R&D prior to speaking with a patent attorney which can then take a further three to six months prior to filing the patent. Once filed, the patent can take years before it’s awarded, with the investment easily running into more than £100,000 for a patent to be awarded.

Although Cristie has had unique IP for years with first-to-market technology, the company actually obtained its first patent as part of an acquisition and has gone on to submit three further patents. The process for gaining a patent on software is complex, time-consuming and expensive. A company must prove it has a unique and novel idea that is able to solve a problem which cannot be otherwise solved.

It’s also important that any information available in the public domain or shared outside cannot be patented so the business can’t discuss the solutions with customers or anyone external to understand if the idea will work, it must be achieved through lab-based R&D.

The company was aware of Patent Box and asked Hazlewoods to provide guidance on what information was required, but it still took a lot of effort to identify exactly what could be claimed and what is not allowable.

Patent box relief has also recently become significantly more complex, and the company has relied on Hazlewoods to assist in the complex calculations.

But the outcome has made all the work worthwhile, and thanks to being eligible, Cristie has been able to invest and expand its R&D efforts with dedicated staff focused on researching whether future ideas are patentable.

Ian Cameron, CEO at Cristie Software, said: “There are significant resources involved in software development. A lot of ideas, code and prototypes end up not being patented or used within our software, either because they don’t solve the intended problem or we find better ways to solve the problem during the R&D. People see and hear about the patent, but often not the R&D investments that don’t lead to patents.”