Sector »
Food and beverage
Beverages
Nutrition
In the food and beverage sector, trends typically move fast. The industries covered are intensely competitive, featuring a number of major players with interests in a wide range of patents across extensive product ranges. The differences between products can be small but are often of great importance to the end consumer. Clients therefore need to move fast to secure their intellectual property in this area to make sure that they are ahead of the next big thing.
In recent times, a more health-conscious consumer base has pushed a focus of food and beverage patents from cost-efficiency to “clean labels” and healthier alternatives. As ever, the aim is to achieve all of this without compromising taste and quality. Plant-based products and nutritional supplements are also increasingly heavily patented. On the manufacturing and packaging side, sustainability is an ever-increasing focus.
The food and beverage team
The food and beverage team at Boult draws on a range of technical backgrounds, including chemistry, engineering, packaging and materials, industrial manufacturing and processing, and healthcare. The team embodies the interdisciplinary approach we employ as a firm, enabling us to provide a depth and breadth of technical expertise and seamless client service.
Our core team has developed longstanding relationships with our key clients – often over decades – and has seen them and their portfolios grow in fascinating ways over the years.
“Our team works as an extension of our clients’ teams, really getting to grips with what makes a product unique and formulating the best commercial strategy to take it forward.”
The food and beverage space is highly competitive and oppositions can be commonplace. Members of our team are regularly involved in large EPO opposition and appeal matters in this sector, on both the attacking and defending side.
While many patent attorneys handle EPO opposition matters, it is less common to have to defend oppositions filed against cases that our clients have themselves drafted. Our team, however, has strong experience of doing exactly that when necessary. The alternative approach of us both drafting and then subsequently defending patents offers significant advantages to our clients due to the attorney’s intimate familiarity with the case, but it also provides useful learning points for future patent drafting. For example, last year we attended six hearings and achieved a win for our client in all six. Seven of the patents we drafted have been opposed and we have successfully kept all but one of these alive through opposition.
In the food and beverage sector, trends typically move fast. The industries covered are intensely competitive, featuring a number of major players with interests in a wide range of patents across extensive product ranges. The differences between products can be small but are often of great importance to the end consumer. Clients therefore need to move fast to secure their intellectual property in this area to make sure that they are ahead of the next big thing.
In recent times, a more health-conscious consumer base has pushed a focus of food and beverage patents from cost-efficiency to “clean labels” and healthier alternatives. As ever, the aim is to achieve all of this without compromising taste and quality. Plant-based products and nutritional supplements are also increasingly heavily patented. On the manufacturing and packaging side, sustainability is an ever-increasing focus.
The food and beverage team
The food and beverage team at Boult draws on a range of technical backgrounds, including chemistry, engineering, packaging and materials, industrial manufacturing and processing, and healthcare. The team embodies the interdisciplinary approach we employ as a firm, enabling us to provide a depth and breadth of technical expertise and seamless client service.
Our core team has developed longstanding relationships with our key clients – often over decades – and has seen them and their portfolios grow in fascinating ways over the years.
What sets us apart
We act as a trusted advisor for our clients and keep their commercial aims at the heart of our work. Whether drafting innovative patent specifications, conducting competitor or portfolio analyses, or invention spotting, we are constantly thinking ahead. It’s a mindset that enables us and our clients to successfully ride the ever-changing tides of the industry.
We are uniquely equipped not only to formulate a portfolio strategy, but to defend it. The food and beverage sector is highly competitive, and we have an excellent track record in this space in opposition and appeal work before the EPO, both from the offensive and defensive perspectives. We have successfully defended many patents that we have drafted, providing great experience to inform our drafting practice. We also have vast experience of providing freedom-to-operate (FTO) reports within the food and beverage sector, and members of the team have provided external training courses on freedom-to-operate searching on behalf of the Forum Institute.
