World IP Day 2018 – Claire Cooney and Janelle Warner

Claire Cooney and Janelle Warner – The Food Scene

Could you please describe your business and which problems it solves?

Our business is called The Food Scene. It has been designed to fill an evident gap in the online food-directory marketplace. The Food Scene’s directory will be a destination where cafes and restaurants can list their offerings, while customers can view images, menus, descriptions & reviews of these establishments to make a successful dining decision.

What kind of innovation and creativity challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?

Most of our challenges appeared when we started designing the website itself; there are so many intricate details associated with creating a website of The Food Scene’s calibre, it has been a huge learning curve for us. We soon discovered the website we were going to launch with had to be the absolute minimum viable product, due to the exorbitant costs associated with our original site ideas. So we certainly had to limit our creative minds to start with a website that simply featured the key elements which made us different. We have had to put many ideas for website features on the back burner and simply focus on the most important ones.

Did your business need to protect certain IP?

We have needed to ensure that the overseas developers that are working on our site agree that The Food Scene’s website is our IP. We also need to protect the name and the brand, which we are currently working on with the team at Hall & Wilcox.

What steps did you take to protect your IP?

We have checked over the original terms and conditions between us and our website developers to ensure that all work completed by them is our IP.

How do these steps protect you in future?

If our business was to become bigger, there is always the chance of those who worked for us along the way trying to claim their stakes. By ensuring that our IP is protected prior to this we are covering all our bases to minimise any issues happening in the future.

Has your IP ever been stolen/misappropriated by a competitor?

No

Is there anything you would do differently next time around?

We would definitely be more aware of making sure there is an agreement in place when hiring external creatives to ensure 100% of the IP is ours.

Are there any key lessons you would like to share with other female entrepreneurs?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help – there are so many amazing resources out there and we’ve found that many established entrepreneurs really like to help the ones just starting out.