The Government has launched a new scheme designed to cut red tape holding back business start-ups by speeding up the patent process.
Smaller firms such as start-up companies are a massive source of clients for the freelancing community, and soon these start-ups may have their patent processing fast-tracked to under 90 days if the minister for intellectual property has anything to say about it. Lord Younger has launched a consultation in order to investigate how patent processing can be streamlined and simplified, which will presumably encourage start-up growth and increase demand for contractors and freelancers.
Lord Younger said that small business and start-up growth is absolutely key to the UK’s economic recovery and allowing firms to progress through the patent process will enable and speed up this growth. This will help move inventive, inspired thoughts move much more quickly into reality, the minister added, and could lead to the kind of innovation that spearheads economic growth through not just growing businesses but providing opportunities for the contract workers that help these firms expand such an important.
Lord Younger has been quite busy, as he isn’t just working on making the patenting process as speedy as possible. In fact, the minister has additionally been looking to find ways of making it easier to understand copyright and patent laws for both firms and consumers alike; to that end Lord Younger invested in a copyright hub that should be able to provide more detailed intellectual property legal knowledge to firms, which could lead to ideas becoming protected much more quickly and easily.
In my opinion this is some fantastic news, as any help that can be thrown towards the UK’s burgeoning SME and start-up community will be absolutely welcome. Smaller firms are absolutely some of the biggest providers of project opportunities to the self-employed, whether they be umbrella company contractors, freelancers, or sole traders, and if the Government follows through with possible reforms designed to cut through the red tape that can hold back these smaller firms, this will free up SMEs and start-ups to begin trading sooner and devote more time, energy, and funds to completing the kinds of projects that are ideal contractor opportunities.
Still, I’d love to see more schemes and initiatives that directly benefit the bottom line of the SME community, such as tax breaks that provide more money in a firm’s coffers that can be used to use contract workers and to expand their businesses. Truth be told there are some initiatives in the works at the moment, but only time will tell if they’ll meet with success or not!
