Laura Trapnell is a specialist intellectual property and technology lawyer who helps founders understand, protect and commercialise the value they are creating. She is Partner and Head of the Technology and Intellectual Property team at Trethowans, with deep experience across IP, IT, software development contracts, licensing, franchising, trade marks, copyright, designs, patents, ecommerce and data protection. Laura’s philosophy is to make specialist IP expertise accessible and affordable beyond London - and to make legal advice feel practical, commercial and usable. She is particularly strong at helping founders work out what IP they actually have, who owns it, what needs protecting, and how to prioritise legal spend when budgets are tight. Her experience spans a wide range of innovation-led sectors, including medtech, SaaS and platform businesses, defence technology, food and drink, wine, champagne and spirits. She has worked with early-stage startups preparing for investment, growing businesses managing brand and technology assets, and companies preparing for exit where IP issues need to be cleaned up before a transaction can complete. Laura is known for being approachable, down to earth and commercially minded. She does not hide behind jargon or give legal advice in a vacuum. Instead, she puts herself in the shoes of the founder or director and focuses on what will make a practical difference to the business. Her aim is to help founders get IP and contracts right early - before disputes, due diligence or investor scrutiny expose problems that could have been avoided.
Laura is best suited to early-stage founders who are building something with protectable value - whether that is a brand, product, software platform, technology process, design, content, data asset or commercial methodology. She is especially helpful for founders preparing to raise investment, because investors will often want confidence that the business owns and can protect the IP it relies on. She is a strong fit for tech, SaaS, platform, medtech, defence, creative, food and drink, and consumer brand businesses. She can work with B2B and B2C businesses, although B2C can require additional care around data, consumer terms, ecommerce and customer contracting.
A 1:1 with Laura is best used as an IP and legal “clinic” - a practical session to understand where you are, what risks may exist, and what to prioritise next. Typical session themes include:
Laura usually starts by asking founders to bring the issue they already know they are facing - for example, “we are about to raise and haven’t protected our IP”, “a developer built our platform”, “we need terms and conditions”, or “we are not sure who owns what”. From there, she helps structure the problem, identify gaps, celebrate what is already in good shape, and create a practical order of priorities. Laura is particularly well suited to giving feedback on 60-second elevator pitches and 10-minute investor pitches where IP, ownership, defensibility or technology risk needs to be drawn out clearly for investors. She can also support through an IP workshop or audit where founders need a more structured review.
