NIPC News

Jane Lambert The World Intellectual Property Organization its World Intellectual Property Indicators Report for 2020 on 7 Dec 2020. For the first time since the 2998 world economic downturn, there had been a 3% drop in patenting activity since 2018 but a sustained increase in the number of applications for trade marks, designs and plant breeders' rights.  The reason for the reduction in the number of patent applications from 3.3 million in 2018 to 3,2 million in 2019 is that the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) received 9.2% fewer applications in 2019 than it did in the previous year and the Japan Patent Office ("JPO") 1.8% fewer.  The CNIPA still received 1.2 million patent applications which was more than any other office. The US Patent and Trademark Office came second with 621,453, the JPO third with 307,969, the Korea Intellectual Property Office fourth with 218,975 and the European Patent Office fifth with 181,479.  Intellectual property ...

Counting down to an interesting conversation today! Have you saved it on your calendar? Blessed to have the multitalented and innovative Barrister @nipclaw on the panel! pic.twitter.com/WNMqVIIoCI — Intellectual Property Lawyers Association Nigeria (@IplanNg) November 26, 2020 Jane Lambert Yesterday I spoke at a webinar entitled "The Business of Dance" which was organized by the Intellectual Property Lawyers Association of Nigeria .  My fellow panellists were Jemima Angulu of Krump Studios ,  Victor Nwejinaka of Blackbones Theatre Kompany , Basorun Aderoju of Hyeres Elite Athletes and Talents and Folarin Aluko  of Trumann Rockwood LP. We also had an intervention from one of the judges of the Customary Court of Nigeria . For many years I have been trying to arrange a similar discussion in the United Kingdom but without success,  That is because intellectual property specialist lawyers and patent and trade mark attorneys do not see much demand fo...

Standard youtube Licence Jane Lambert Cities have been motors of innovation and creativity throughout history,  Think of Periclean Athens, renaissance Florence, enlightenment Edinburgh and Silicon Valley.  Every year, the WIPO (the UN specialist agency for intellectual property) publishes a ranking of science and technology hotspots.   The list is compiled using the following methodology: "Inventors listed in patent applications under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), spanning the years 2014 to 2018.  Authors listed in scientific publications in the Web of Science’s Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and covering the same period.  The geocoding of inventor and author addresses and the use of density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) algorithm to the geocoded inventor and author points." The above film shows the top 10 clusters for 2020.  From a British perspective, it is disappointing that there are no British clusters i...

Intellectual Property Office, Newport Reproduced with kind permission of the Intellectual Property Office Jane Lambert   In  Protecting creativity, supporting innovation: IP enforcement 2020   which was published on 16 May 2020, the Intellectual Property Office promised to review periodically "existing methods of legal recourse for IP infringement to ensure they are effective, consistent, and proportionate."  On 5 Oct 2020, it announced a call for evidence from IP rights owners to inform that review.   The closing date for submissions is 11:45 on 2 Nov 2020. There are three key themes for the review;  the cost of legal challenges,  how accessible and effective the judicial process is, and  improvements to the Small Claims Track of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court.  There is also a discussion on whether to include registered designs disputes within the jurisdiction of the Small Claims Track. The Introduction  states that t...

By LiverpoolFitzy2009 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6823465   Jane Lambert I first mentioned the Menai Science Park in  M-SParc - Anglesey's Science Park   on 29 Aug 2018 and have followed its progress ever since. Over lockdown, the park's Enterprise Hub has presented some excellent webinars.  Today's Cross Border Collaboration Masterclass   by Sam Marchetti  was one of the best. Sam is founder of Consortia Co  which assists businesses to bid for work from the public and private sectors.  He began his talk by asking each of us what we did for a living,  There were about 10 of us at one point and we ranged from a senior innovation manager at Bangor University to a student. Sam described the student as the most fortunate of us because his options were unlimited. Having ascertained his audience he angled his presentation to meet our priorities.   Using animated slides one of which ...

Standard YouTube Licence  Jane Lambert The Global Innovation Index  (GII") is an annual ranking of countries by their capacity for innovation. It is compiled by Cornell University business school , INSEAD (Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires)  and the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) . In their  report for 2020 , they placed the UK fourth in the GII behind Switzerland, Sweden and the USA, This is one up on the previous year though it will be seen from the graphic on page 12 of the report that the UK has been higher.  In 2015, for instance, the UK came second (see the Department for Business Innovation and Skills' press release UK ranked as world-leader in innovation   17 Sept 2015), The reason for its fourth =p;ace in the rankings appears to be as follows: "In addition, the country maintains its top three lead in the quality of its universities (2nd) and the quality of its scientific publications (1st). It ranks sixth in the qual...

Author Basher Eyre Licence CC BY-SA 2.0  Source Wikipedia, Rolls Buildin g Jane Lambert Congratulations to Richard Meade QC on his appointment to the High Court bench (see the Judicial Appointments Commission press releas e of 4 Sept 2020).  He will take up his appointment on Monday.   As I said in  Appointments to the Court of Appeal   2 Aug 2020, Sir Colin Birss's elevation to the Court of Appeal gad left a vacancy in the Patents Court. It will now be filled by Richard Meade. Interestingly. the JAC press release stated that more High Court judge announcements will be made as the year progresses. In yesterday's communication to members of the IP Bar Association, Daniel Alexander QC congratulated Richard Meade and Sir Colin Birss but also reminded us of other appointments.  The Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Vos, will be the new Master of the Rolls.   Simon Clark, Philip Harris and Brian Whitehead have been appointed to hear ...

By Aurelien Guichard from London, United Kingdom - Royal Courts of Justice, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curi d=62065074 Jane Lambert We should like to congratulate Mr Justice Birss and Mr Justice Nugee on their elevation to the Court of Appeal (see Courts and Tribunal Judiciary Appointment of Lord and Lady Justices of Appeal   31 July 2020).  Since Lord Justice Arnold's elevation, Mr Justice Birss has been the presiding judge of the Patents Court. We can expect a new appointment to replace him.  I have no inside information but I have a shrewd idea who that is likely to be. If I am right it will come as a surprise to many people. But I'm not saying. Mr Justice Nugee also sits in the Patents Court from time to time.   The last time I mentioned him was in my article on freezing injunctions (see Jane Lambert  Freezing Injunctions - Organic Grape Spirit Ltd v Nueva IQT, SL   29 July 2020 NIPC Law).  T...

Jane Lambert Since 2017 I have been invited to speak at the Cambridge IP Law Summer School.  I shared my experiences in Cambridge IP Law Summer School 2017   on 20 Aug 2017 and Cambridge IP Law Summer School 2019 on 19 Aug 2019. I am sorry to say that Downing College cannot host us this year because of the COVID-19 emergency.   Happily, not all is lost because Informa , which runs the course, has made arrangements to hold it online (see IP Law Summer School     10 to 20 Aug 2020). I shall deliver two papers: "TMT A SEP & FRAND": Standard essential patents and FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms for the licensing of such patents on 12 Aug 2020 at 15:20; and "Intellectual Property Enforcement Measures, Especially Anti-piracy Measures in the Digital Environment"  on 20 Aug 2020 at 14:25. When I was invited to give the first talk in November we had every hope of a decision of the Supreme Court on the topic....

Standard youtube Licence Jane Lambert According to Francis Gurry. the Director-General of the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) the UN specialist agency for intellectual property, today is World Yoga Day,  Dr Gurry described it as India's gift to the world.   I knew yoga originated in India and I shall take his word that it is a gift as I have never practised it myself. Dr Gurry says that yoga is connected with IP because it promotes creativity and innovation.  I can understand how that might be even though I do not practise yoga because my brain works much more efficiently and I get good ideas whenever I exercise another discipline that trains body and mind, namely classical ballet.   As Juvenal put it," orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano." Dr Gurry's term as Director-General is due to end soon.  He has done much for WIPO over the years including setting up and running the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre which ke...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert A time-honoured way of proving the existence of a document on a particular day is to place it in a sealed envelope and post it to oneself or a trusted third party.  The envelope would bear a postmark proving the date and place of posting of the envelope.  If the seal was intact and there was no obvious tampering with the envelope it would prove that the ideas expressed in the document existed on the date of posting.  Often it proved other things such as the originator of the idea or at least the author of the document. In the United States, the exercise was called a "poor man's patent" possibly because it could sometimes identify the person who was entitled to apply for a patent before the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (Public Law 112-29 26 Sept 2011) .  However, it was and is used here to prove the authorship of a copyright work or the originator of a trade secret.  The system of source code escrow is simply a...

Standard YouTube Licence  Jane Lambert Improvements in broadcasting and recording technologies in the 20th century created the need for new intellectual property rights known as rights in performances  to protect the revenues of actors, dancers, musicians. singers and other performers as well as those of their broadcasters and film and sound recording studios in the broadcasts and recordings of their work.  In the United Kingdom, the rights of such performers are protected by Part II of the  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 .  Performers who are UK nationals or residents enjoy similar rights in other countries by virtue of the International Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations of 26 Oct 1961("Rome Convention") . Developments in digital technology towards the end of the last century required a strengthening of those rights which resulted in the  WIPO Performances and Phonograms ...

Jane Lambert There has not been much IP training lately either for business owners and the general public or for lawyers, patent or trade mark attorneys or other IP professionals.  That could be a problem because as I said in IP Services during the Emergency   23 March 2020 NIPC Inventors Club and many times since IP has never been more important than it is now. On 21 April 2020, I tried to do something about it by delivering over the internet a talk on patents that I had given some years ago to an audience of solicitors and patent and trade mark attorneys at the offices of Morgan Cole (now Blake Morgan ) in Oxford.  This was part of a double act that I performed with the distinguished solicitor and author Peter Groves .   The training started at 14:00 and lasted till 17:00.   My contribution was an introduction to patent law and overview that lasted 90 minutes. The feedback that we received suggested that the talk had gone down v...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert Although the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought havoc on long-planned celebrations of World Intellectual Property Day including those that had been announced by M-SParc (the Menai Science Park ) in North Wales, nothing could have done more to ram home the importance of the day and its theme of innovation for a green future , Before the pandemic, there was a temptation for our species to regard itself as somehow immune from environmental catastrophe, to concentrate on economic growth regardless of the impact on the atmosphere and water supplies and to postpone decisions on climate change until well into the future.  Well, COVID-19 shows that it can't.  The pandemic, which is thought to have originated in the so-called wet market in Wuhan, is as much an environmental calamity as the Winter floods in England or the fires in Australia. Just as it is technology that is helping humanity to respond to COVID-19 in the search for dia...

Jane Lambert If your business has been forced to close if your staff are furloughed. if you are a furloughed employee or even if you have lost your job one as a result of this ****ing virus, one of the few positive things you can do during this lockdown is to train.  And if you are thinking of launching new products, starting a new business or looking for a new job one of the most useful things you can learn is intellectual property . Starting next Tuesday at 14:00 London time, I shall give an introductory talk on English and Welsh patent law which, in keeping with academic tradition, I shall call Patents 101.  This talk will last about 90 minutes and is aimed primarily at entrepreneurs, business owners and managers but should also be useful for solicitors and barristers who specialize in fields other than intellectual property and perhaps even associates and trainees who are about to work in their firms' IP departments. The talk will cover the following topi...

Addicted04 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) Jane Lambert The most striking slide of Francis Gurry 's  Briefing for Member States and Other Stakeholders   of the World Intellectual Property Organization  which he presented on 7 April 2020 is #16,  China surpassed the U.S. as the top source of international patent applications in 2019.  Last year China made 58,890 international patent applications compared to 57,849 from the USA and 52,660 from Japan. According to the same slide, the USA made more patent applications than any other country in 2009.  China lay a long way behind the USA, Japan and Germany with roughly the same number of applications as South Korea and France. The UK came in #7 with 5,786 international patent applications in 2019 if anyone is interested. That is less than 10% of the Chinese figure. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.  I was at a domain ...

Author Rbreidbrown   Licence CC BY-SA 4.0 Jane Lambert Less than two months after its decisions in the DABUS cases  which I blogged in Artificial Intelligence - The DABUS Decisions   19 Feb 2020 NIPC Law, the Receiving Section of the European Patent Office has published a press release announcing that it has accepted a patent application for an improved method of rodent presentation. The invention was developed at the Institiut National des Ḗtudes Rongeuses at Zimmerbach in Alsace.  The specification states that cats have a predilection for delivering mice and other small mammals to their keepers (possibly as a gesture of affection) but conventional methods of delivery, namely in the feline's jaws present quality control challenges for the recipients.  Sometimes the specimen is still alive which causes recipients of a nervous disposition to scream and climb on furniture as soon as it is released.  Alternatively, the specimen m...

"The Vampire" Philip Burne-Jones  Jane Lambert "Will nothing kill off the Unified Patent Court?" some might ask.  One would have thought our government's volte-face on British participation in the Unified Patent Court agreement would have been pretty lethal (see Jane Lambert Volte-Face on the UPC Agreement 29 Feb 2020). If that was not enough to kill it off the German Constitutional Court's decision in 2 BvR 739/17 ( Re the UPC Agreement) was like a stake through the heart. And yet the UPC refuses to die.  On the day after the Constitutional Court had delivered its judgment, the Preparatory Committee commented: "Despite the fact that the judgement will result in further delay the preparatory work will continue, while the judgement and the way forward is further analysed." Not even the COVID-19 pandemic will daunt them:  "work will move forward using all available resources to keep the momentum." As I said in...