NIPC News

  Jane Lambert Every 5 November we celebrate the foiling of a plot to assassinate King James I and Members of Parliament in 1605 with fireworks.  This year there will be a different kind of fireworks at the Chicago Booth Conference Centre  when many of the world's IP practitioners and scholars meet for CTC Legal Events'  Winter IP Conference to discuss the latest developments in SEP licensing, copyright and LLM training and other urgent topics.   This year's conference is the third such event. I participated in last year's and wrote about it in CTC Legal' s Second  London IP Conference on 10 Nov 2025. This year's format has been redesigned to concentrate the patent and trade mark forums and other discussions into a single day. I have been invited back this year to talk about the Supreme Court's judgment in Tesla, Inc and another v InterDigital Patent Holdings, Inc and others [2026] UKSC 27, which I discussed in Patents - Tesla Inc v InterDigita...

Royal Courts of Justice Author:  Aurelien Guichard   Licence:  CC BY-SA 2.0   Source:  Wikimedia   Jane Lambert The presiding judge of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal is the Master of the Rolls.  It is a very important office.  Previous incumbents such as Lord Denning and Lord Woolf  have greatly influenced the development of the law.   The present Master of the Rolls is Sir Geoffrey Vos.   According to the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website , his successor is to be the Chancellor, Sir Colin Birss. Sir Colin has held many important judicial offices over the years, but I would argue that one of his most significant achievements was the relaunch of the Patents County Court in 2010.   The court had been established by the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 to resolve patent and design disputes between small and medium enterprises.  Despite the high hopes of those who promoted it, the court wa...

Leeds Courthouse: Home of the Business and Property Courts in Leeds (c) 2005 Jane Lambert, all rights reserved Jane Lambert Just under 9 years ago, I announced the launch of the Business and Property Courts in Launch of a Judicial Superhighway?   in NIPC Northwest and  The Leeds Business and Property Court s in NIPC Yorkshire. The work of the courts in the Queen's Bench and Chancery Divisions, which resolved business disputes was coordinated, but they remained part of the Divisions of the High Court that had been established by The Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 . Yesterday, the Lady Chief Justice of England announced the establishment of a new Business and Property Division to replace the Chancery Division early in the next legal year in The Lady Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor modernise the High Court through establishment of the Business and Property Division   and a YouTube video entitled  Lady Chief Justice- Business and Property Division   2 J...

Manchester Civil Justice Centre Author Skip88 Licence Public Domain   Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Yesterday afternoon, I attended the Intellectual Property Crime Group  Knowledge Share, Introducing the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court Small Claims Track.  That was an online presentation given by Deputy District Judges Nicola Solomion and Richard Vary.  It consisted of 18 slides and lasted just over an hour.  Well over 140 people attended the call at one point.   I noted some familiar names in the Participants' list, including Barbara Cookson , Dids Macdonald  and Michael Edenborough . The presentation began with the observation that the court was now working well with good feedback.  The move to Manchester had been successful.   It had received additional resources which had enabled Deputy District Judge Vary to "rattle through his list."  Waiting times were now quite short.  Many cases were settled through...

England v India, 2025 First Test, Headingly, Leeds © 2025 Jane Elizabeth Lambert, all rights reserved   Jane Lambert World Intellectual Property Day  is an interntational celebration of the laws that protect investment in branding , design , technology and creativity .  It takes place on or around 26 April which is the anniversary of the WIPO Convention's entry into force.  Each year the celebrations focus on a theme.  The theme for 2026 will be IP and Sports - Ready, Set, Innovate . The Menai Science Park ("M-SParc")  on Anglesey has contributed significantly to  Wales's celebrations of World Intellectual Property Day  every year since 2019.  Sports related businesses based at the science park include Pelly  which offers information systems and services to football club managers and Haia Communications Ltd , which provides a platform for e-sports.  The organizers of this year's celebrations will be Lois Bevan Shaw and Steff Thoma...

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...