Latest Articles

Falling to BITs: the Eli Lilly and Philip Morris Cases

NIPC Law  8 April 2017

Do the awards in Philip Morris v Australia and Eli Lilly v Canada mean that IP owners can't claim compensation from foreign governments if those governments fail to enforce their IP laws? Probably not, because nothing in those cases affects the principle that an investor that suffers expropriation of his IP rights can recover compensation for such expropriation. More

IP Yorkshire 10 April 2018

I was one of the speakers at CIPA's York meeting at the Principal Hotel. The others were Louise Edwards of Mazars, David Bloom of Safeguard IP and Kalim Yasseen of the IPO. Tony Rollins chaired the meeting.

I spoke about litigation after 28 March 2017 when the EU treaties will cease to apply and considered the litigation framework we are likely to find then. Louise discussed changes to patent box relief in the Finance Act 2016 and the Finance Bill. David talked about all the new products in IP insurance. Yasim covered changes to the Patents Rules and new services on the IPO's section of the .gov.uk website  More 

IP Litigation After Brexit

IP North West 9 April 2018

In 2 years time, there will be no Community design or EU trade mark courts and we may well have left the Unified Patent Court. What should we do then? Well, make more use of IPEC, especially the small claims track, for a start as we need to do something about the cost of IP litigation in this country. We need to develop new markets for our exports and perhaps rely on the protection from expropriation provisions of bilateral investment treaties if our intellectual assets are not adequately protected in our overseas markets. More