NIPC News

John Napier   Jane Lambert As I said in St Andrews Innovation Week , there has been   innovation in St Andrews since the 16th century at least.  John Napier, one of our alumni, invented a precursor of the slide rule and compiled the first logarithms.   Innovation continues at the Eden Campus  which I visited on 15 April 2025 and described in St Andrews Innovation   the very next day. Some of St Andrews Innovation's activities take place online and are available to the public.   Among the most useful are the Lunch & Learn Masterclasses  on YouTube.  These are a series of presentations that have been recorded and posted to YouTube.  The topics are as follows: Lunch and Learn: Pitching Masterclass   Lunch & Learn Entrepreneurship in the Creative Arts   Lunch and Learn: Turn Expertise Into Income Through Consultancy   Lunch & Learn: What is Bootstrap Financing?    Lunch & Learn: Demyst...

(c) 2025 Menai Science Park  Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert I discovered M-SParc  (the Menai Science Park) while on holiday in Beaumaris in 2018.  I wrote about it in  M-SParc - Anglesey's Science Park   on 29 Aug 2018.  I got to know it better when I attended the Anglesey Business Festival  later in the year.  I helped the park contribute to World Intellectual Property Day on 26 April 2019 (see Jane Lambert  Celebrating World IP Day at M-SParc: Basic Tips for Startups and other Small Businesse s 29 April 2019,  NIPC Cymru ).  The event was so successful that Emily Roberts , who was then in charge of Operations and Customer Experience at M-SParc, decided to hold a similar event on 11 November to be known as " Wales Enterprise Day." This year's Wales Enterprise Day coincided with the World Intellectual Property Organization's worldwide celebration of examiners .  M-SParc decided to combine both celebrations with a lu...

UK Supreme Court Author Kelsey Farish   Licence CC BY 4.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Last week's Winter Intellectual Property Conference  by CTC Legal Events was different from almost every  IP conference or seminar that I had previously attended.  For a start, there were very few slides.  I had prepared some for my talk on FRAND, as had  Maria-Christina Peyman of Birketts for her review of leading IP cases, but most of the topics were moderated discussions.  Secondly, the conference took place in  the magnificently equipped London campus of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business .  Thirdly, the organizers attracted some of the biggest names in IP, such as Professor Sir Robin Jacob, a former Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal and Sam Williams, Head of Intellectual Property at Siemens.  A lot of information was squeezed into the 5th and 6th of November.  The organizers covered that grou...

Napier's Bones Author Kim Traynor   Licence CC BY-SA 3.0   Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert I introduced St Andrews Innovation  in my article on Connect-Ed Network Meet Up on "Engaging and Supporting Female Founders" in the Cathedral Room at Walter Bower House on St Andrews's new Eden Campus , which I attended on 15 April 2025. The object in the photo is a calculation aid called "Napier's bones."   The name Napier refers to its inventor, John Napier , who studied at St Andrews around 1563. Napier's bones show that St Andrews's academics, graduates and students have been innovating for a very long time.  At the beginning of the academic year, they celebrate their creativity, collaboration and forward-thinking entrepreneurship with an Innovation Week consisting of talks, workshops and networking opportunities. This year's Innobation Week takes place between 6 and 10 Oct 2025.   Here are some of the events: 6 Oct 13:00 - 15:00...

Design Museum, London Author Anthony O'Neill   Licence CC BY-SA 2.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Every so often, the government of the day has a bash at changing design law.  The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 abolished copyright as a means of protecting product designs, introduced a new intellectual property right known as unregistered design right and modified the Registered Designs Act 1949.  That statute was further modified by the Registered Design Regulations, which implemented Directive 98/71/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 October 1998 on the legal protection of designs.  Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 of 12 December 2001 on Community designs introduced two more IP rights known respectively as registered and unregistered Community designs.  The Intellectual Property Act 2014 brought further modifications to both registered designs and unregistered design rights.  Brexit abolished regist...

Author World Intellectual Property Organization  Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Internat Jane Lambert The Global Innovation Index ("GII") analyses innovation ecosystems across 139 economies, tracking global innovation trends through investment patterns, technological progress, adoption rates, and socioeconomic impact.  The United Kingdom ranked 4th in that index, behind Switzerland, Sweden, and the United States, in 2021, 2022, and 2023. In 2024, it dropped to 5th, overtaken by Singapore.  In 2025, it was also leapfrogged by South Korea, which rose from 6th in 2024. The UK is ahead of Germany, Japan and France which are now outside the top 10 altogether.  Germany was 9th last year, but has slipped to 11th.  Its position in the top 10 has been taken by Germany. Japan has risen from 13th to 12th.  France has dropped from 12th to 13th (see Figure 1, "The GII Dynamo: The Top 15 Innovators, 2021–2025 "). The performance of each participating count...