NIPC News

Author Hydragyrum Reproduced with kind permission of the Author Jane Lambert Since my last News Roundup   on 12 Oct 2017 I have written about copyright in photographs and television gameshow formats. the construction of patent licence terms and the English courts' jurisdiction to hear applications for declarations of non-infringement. I have also discussed the second reading of the Data Protection Bill in the House of Lords and the Irish High Court's referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union of the question of whether standard contract terms for the transfer of data overseas comply with EU law. I have continued to monitor the Brexit negotiations and discussed a joint letter from the British government and the Commission on our future relationship with the World Trade Organization. I attended the annual meeting of the WIPO domain name dispute resolution panellists and wrote about it in NIPC Branding. I discussed an IPO consultation o...

Author :  Jack Torcello Licence  Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported Source  Wikipedia Jane Lambert In this Update, I discuss my article on FRAND. the article 50 negotiations with the remaining 27 EU member states. Silicon Roundabout, accessing free IP advice in Yorkshire and my presentation on copyright in photographs in Liverpool yesterday. FRAND Ever since the Statute of Monopolies 1623, the law has tried to balance the interests of consumers with those of inventors. The current manifestation of this balancing exercise occurs where an industry standard requires the use of patented inventions. Obviously, patentees expect and are entitled to be rewarded for their ingenuity but if consumers are to benefit fully from advantages in technology all manufacturers must be allowed to use the patented inventions. The question then arises on what terms and in particular at what rates should such inventions be licensed? The answer from cour...

Jane Lambert Whenever I get a lot of enquiries on the same topic from a particular location I offer a talk on the subject.  I have recently had a lot of enquiries from Liverpool and the North West on "When is it OK to reuse other people's photos or other content?" The issue can arise in many ways. Sometimes a copyright owner complains that copies of his photos appear on someone else's website without his permission and he wants to know what he can do about it. Other times, I find myself counselling a business owner who has received a bruising letter before claim demanding eye-watering sums of money by way of compensation and legal costs and far-reaching undertakings. Before the launch of the small claims track of the small claims track of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in 2012, the question was often academic because the costs of copyright infringement litigation greatly exceeded the damages that were likely to be awarded. What has made it a live...

Brexit Despite Mrs May's conciliatory speech in Florence, the two sides in the withdrawal agreement negotiations seem to be no closer on the one issue that matters, namely, how can the British government's commitments to such an agreement be guaranteed if the UK will not accept the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice after March 2019 (see Jane Lambert Brexit Briefing - September 2017 3 Oct 2017 NIPC Brexit). Despite her warm words, Mrs May reaffirms that no deal is better than a bad deal and, of course, she is right. But the same is true for the 27 states that remain in the EU. A deal that does not guarantee Britain's commitments to the withdrawal agreement to the same extent as they would be bound would be a bad deal for them.  They cannot be expected to agree to it. That is why the European Parliament overwhelmingly concluded that insufficient progress had been made in the withdrawal agreement talks to enable the negotiators to move on to trade (see the Eu...

Business and Property Courts The Business and Property Courts in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Manchester and London went live yesterday. I discussed them in Launch of a Judicial Superhighway   on 12 July 2014 in IP North West and  The Leeds Business and Property Courts   on 12 July 2017 in IP Yorkshire. On 27 Sept 2017, the Judiciary issued a new 14-page advisory note  which I mentioned in   Better than the M4 - "The Judicial Superhighway"  2 Oct 2017. Relevance  This topic affects IP practitioners and owners as well as litigation lawyers throughout the UK, particularly those in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds and Manchester. Commonwealth Games Birmingham has been chosen as the UK's candidate city to host the Commonwealth Grounds. Like all other major sporting events, the Games will rely on sponsorship, broadcasting and licensing revenues but, unlike the Olympics, there is nothing like the Nairobi Treaty or Olympic asso...