NIPC News

Punts on the Cam © 2017 Jane Lambert: all rights reserved Jane Lambert This year's Cambridge IP Law Summer School lived up to expectations . Cambridge is delightful at any time of the year.  It was good to see it just before Christmas when the winter school took place. The course is stimulating even if it is held online as happened in 2020 .  But the best place to hold it is Cambridge and Summer is the best time. The course takes place at Downing College which has produced many of the country's leading practitioners and academic lawyers.  One of them was Christopher Stothers  whose talk on arbitration of intellectual property disputes was one of the highlights of my week.  We had a lot of good speakers from several countries. Delegates came from Belgium, Denmark, the Irish Republic amd Saudi Arabia as well as the UK. IP law has changed significantly since our departure from the EU. Our government is negotiating free trade and other agreements with the government...

Shanghai Licence CC9.10   Source Wikimedia Common s   Jane Lambert On 19 Dec 2021, I announced the Intellectual Property Office's consultation on standard essential patents and innovation.   The consultation closed on 1 March 2022 and a Summary of Responses to the Call for Views  has been published.   The summary covers the following topics: Section 1 - The balance of the ecosystem and benefits to innovation and consumers Section 2 - Competition and market functioning Section 3 - Transparency Section 4 – Patent infringement and remedies Section 5 – Licensing of SEPs Section 6 -SEP Litigation A list of respondents appears on page 88 of the summary. They include academics. businesses, law firms. patent attorneys and interest groups.  Contributions came from within the UK and beyond. The IPO seems to have received a wide range of views, some of which diverged widely. In view of the breadth of issues and the divergence of the views on the need for gov...

Summer School Attendees  © 2017 Gita Mistry: All rights reserved   Jane Lambert For the first time in three years, there will be an IP Law Summer School in Cambridge in Summer . There was an IP law Summer School in 2020 but it took place entirely online.  There were presentations on IP law in Cambridge last year given by the usual speakers but they took place in December . We had a dinner and pub quiz but not much else.  We also had to give the last few talks online to comply with public health regulations.   If you want to know what happens at the Cambridge IP Law Summer School, look at my write-ups for 2017 and 2019 .  The event is attended by some of the leading practitioners in this country and abroad.  For instance, on Tuesday 16 Aug 2022 I will introduce Sean Leach from Mathys & Squire, Hiroshi Sheraton from Baker & McKenzie, Andrew Payne from TaylorWessing, Matthew Shade of Wilmer Hale, Andrew White of Mathys & Squire, Timothy...

Jane Lambert   In 2016 I launched NIPC Branding  for entrepreneurs, business owners, angel investors and others who needed to know about trade marks , passing off , domain names  and other aspects of branding law  in everyday language. One of my most popular articles was introductions to English and EU trade mark law called "Auntie Jane's Trade Mark Tips". These were intended for non-lawyers but several lawyers told me that they had read and enjoyed them. The original series covered the following topics some of which I updated yesterday: "The Very Basics" - 8 June 2017 "EU and British Trade Marks" 9 June 2017 (updated 23 May 2022) "Where to find the Law " 10 June 2017 (updated 23 May 2022) " What is a Trade Mark" 12 June 2017 (Updated 23 May 2022) "How do I register a Trade Mark"  13 June 2017 " Some of the Things that can go wrong " 15 June 2017 " Some more Things that can go wrong " 27 July 2017 ...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert On 26 April 2022, the world celebrated World Intellectual Property Day .  That is a worldwide festival to celebrate the entry into force of the World Intellectual Property Organization Convention , the international agreement that established the World Intellectual Property Organization *"WIPO").   I took part in two of the celebrations: i presented a webinar for the Liverpool Law Society entitled  "Intellectual Property Law after Brexit and onwards”; and  I chaired the Menai Science Park's celebration of the Creativity, Enterprise and innovation of the Young People of Wales. Both events had unexpected last-minute hitches which the organizers took in their stride.  It is fair to say that both events went well, I had originally intended to cover the topics that I had discussed in my presentation  How Brexit has changed IP Law   and handout IP after Brexit .  On the morning of the talk, I learned that there...

Jane Lambert On 28 April 2022, the European Patent Office and the European Investment Office published a joint report entitled  Deep tech innovation in smart connected technologies A comparative analysis of SMEs in Europe and the United States April 2022 .  Although the report contained a lot of positive findings, the headline of the EPO's news item was decidedly gloomy: "Despite impressive patent activity, Europe’s small deep tech businesses lag behind their US counterparts." Part of the reason for the gloom is that report focused on the EU rather than Europe as a whole. Consequently, it missed the fact that the UK has almost 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises developing 4IR technologies (nearly twice as many as Germany with 570 and nearly two and a half times as many as France with 400) and that London hosts one of the top clusters of such businesses (see page 30 and the map on page 29 of the main report). It would have been interesting to know the reasons for t...

Standard YiuRuve Licence Jane Lambert   The World Intellectual Property Organization's  World Intellectual Property Report   appears every two years or so with a different theme.  In 2019 it was  The Geography of Innovation: Local Hotspots, Global Networks . in 2017  Intangible Capital in Global Value Chains , in 2015  Breakthrough Innovation and Economic Growth , in 2013  Brand - Reputation and Image in the Global Marketplace   and in 2011  The Changing Face of Innovation .  The title of the latest report which appeared on 7 April 2022 is The Direction of Innovation. The "direction of innovation" is defined on the first page of the report's executive summary as "the combination or sum of all the decisions individuals, !rms, universities and governments make on which technological opportunities to pursue at any one time."  The report analyses patenting activities over the last century and observes that it comes in phases. ...

Queen Elizabeth I in the Court of Queen's Bench Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary  have published a new edition of the Queen's Bench Division Guide on 7 Feb 2022.  It is a guide to practice within the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice.  It supplements the Civil Procedure Rules and Practice Directions  and is intended to make it easier for parties and their legal representatives to use that Division. The Queen's Bench Division is one of three divisions of the High Court of Justice established by s.5 (1) of the Senior Courts Act 1981.  Its work consists mainly of claims for damages for breach of contract and tort and the recovery of debts but it also has a number of specialist courts known respectively as "The Administrative Court", "The Admiralty Court", "The Commercial Court", "The Circuit Commercial Court" and "The Technology and Construction Court."  Although...

WIPO Author Emanuel Berrod Licence CC BY-SA 4.0   Jane Lambert The World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO")  describes an intellectual property audit as a tool for identifying "potential IP assets", that is to say, protectable  intellectual assets . An IP audit helps to uncover unused or under-utilized assets, determine ownership of those assets and warn against possible conflicts with intellectual property owners or potential infringers.  Information on the types of IP audit, preparing for such an audit and carrying it out is available on the Intellectual Property page of the WIPO website .  More detailed information can be found in Module 10   of IP Panorama .    The WIPO categorized IP audits as follows: " General-purpose  This is broadest type of IP audit, used by new companies or those considering implementing new IP policies, standards or procedures. It is also suitable for companies implementing new marketing approa...