NIPC News

European Commission Author  EmDee  Licence  CC BY-SA 4.0  Source  Wikipedia Commons Jane Lambert In the last few years, there has been a spate of litigation throughout the world between businesses that have acquired large portfolios of patents that are essential for compliance with a manufacturing standard which are known as "standard essential patents" ("SEP")  and the world's consumer electronics manufacturers known as "implementors" who want to use their patents.  Standard setting institutions such as ETSI  require the proprietors of SEPs to license their patents to implementors on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") terms. Such an arrangement ought to work very well.   As Mr Justice Marcus Smith said in Koninklijke Philips NV v Asustek Computer Inc. and others [2020] EWHC 29 (Ch) (17 January 2020) at paragraph [7 (4)]: "Standard Essential Patents can be of great value to their holders. Holders can expect a substa...

IP Valuation Article  Hidden Value - A Study of the UK Valuation Market   30 Sep 2017 The announcement of the appointment of Metis Partners to market Barratts' intellectual property occurred a few days after the publication of Martin Brassell and Jackie Maguire's study of the British IP valuation industry. The study was commissioned by the IPO to help it understand why businesses do not value their IP rights more often. The authors do not address that question directly but rather preliminary questions on the size of the market and the scope for its expansion. It is an interesting and useful enquiry accompanied by an even more useful and interesting appendix on methodology. The report prompted my own thoughts on valuation and whether it is useful. While agreeing that it can be useful I point out that it is not fully developed and that there is a lot of muddled thinking as to how IP works, I can understand businesses' reluctance to use it. However, that should change...