Leadership

Bilgay is the Founding Chairman of inventeQ, an Intellectual Property Strategy company dedicated to helping deep tech innovators protect and maximise the value of their IP. With over 35 years of experience spanning engineering, IP strategy, investment raising, and global patent portfolio development, Bilgay brings a rare blend of executive leadership, technical expertise, and legal insight.

He has successfully:

• Turned innovation into lasting competitive advantage for deep-tech scaleups
• Built strong, defensible patent portfolios from scratch
• Advised cutting-edge technology teams on IP strategy
• Positioned IP as a key enabler for investment, product development, and strategic partnerships

Bilgay holds both a BSc and a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He built and led a research team at the University of Hertfordshire focused on Digital Signal and Image Processing, publishing in leading journals and advancing the field of image compression. His DSP Teaching Kit, published by Texas Instruments, sold over 1,000 copies in its first month and became a standard reference in electrical engineering departments worldwide.

In 2000, Bilgay and his team left academia to found visiOprime, a startup specialising in image processing and digital recording. Within 18 months, they built a 14-strong US patent portfolio that played a pivotal role in the company’s acquisition by NOVAR PLC, a FTSE 250 company, in a record-time exit in 2002.

Bilgay continued to shape technology strategy in industry, establishing R&D and video technology divisions at Synectics PLC and Karel.

He is widely recognised for his ability to transform breakthrough technologies into robust, defensible, and monetisable IP assets. His strong academic foundation and commercial experience enable him to operate seamlessly across technical and legal domains, providing strategic IP guidance to startups, scaleups, and global enterprises.