NIPC News

Author Monsarc Public Domain Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert One of the high points of my year as an intellectual property lawyer has been the Cambridge IP Law Summer School at Downing College, Cambridge. It is addressed by some of the world's leading IP practitioners and scholars.  For the last few years, I have been invited to contribute to their discussions.   Not even Covid19 managed to stop the event though it did change it.  Last year it was held online.  The presentations and the Q & A discussions were, as always, excellent.  The only element that we missed was networking.  Cambridge is a place to learn but it is also a place to have fun.  In previous years, the event organizers Informa Connect had offered all sorts of evening entertainments from a black-tie dinner to punting on the Cam. It was not possible to present those activities online. Narinder Hayer, Informa Connect's organizer, told me that she had hoped to retur...

Jane Lambert For the second year running, I have been invited to address C5's annual conference on Pharma & Biotech Litigation .  That conference will take place at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Amsterdam between 26 and 27 Feb 2019.  Last year I discussed the Supreme Court's decision in  Eli Lilly v Actavis UK Ltd and others   [2017] Bus LR 1731, [2017] UKSC 48, [2017] RPC 21 with partners from the Dutch and German offices of DLA.  This year I shall be sharing a platform with  Anna P. López Lozano  who is head of IP at Esteve in Barcelona on the topic of Maximizing IP Regulatory Rights.  I shall be talking about supplementary protection certificates, a topic that I have recently addressed in the context of Brexit in Patents of there is no Deal   3 Oct 2018 NIPC Brexit. Brexit is one of the key themes of the 2019 conference and there be a pre-conference workshop on the topic on 25 Feb 2019 entitled READY, STEADY, BREXIT...

Jane Lambert I have been invited to speak ar MBL's IP for Commercial Lawyers - 2018 Conference  which will take place in London between 09:30 and 17:15 on 27 Nov 2018.  The conference will cover a wide range of topics from basic concepts to the effect of Brexit on IP rights.  My topic is " Patents - What happens after Brexit£  which will address the thorny question of whether there is any chance that the Unified Patent Court will ever open its doors. As brands , designs  and  plant varieties  can be protected throughout the European Union by EU trade marks , registered  and unregistered Community designs  and Community plant variety rights  and as much of our national trade mark, registered design, copyright, trade secrecy and patent law has been harmonized by EU directives, our withdrawal from the EU will have far-reaching consequences for British businesses which I have charted in my Brexit blog . Recently the go...

Jane Lambert I mentioned the IPAN World IP Day conference in Happy World Intellectual Property Day   earlier today.  I knew that the Minister would speak at the event but I did not know that he would announce British Ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement .  But that is precisely what happened (see  Sam Gyimah announces ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement   26 April 2018 IPO). That does not mean that the Unified Patent Court will open its doors any time soon or that the UK can remain party to the agreement after Brexit.  The German Constitutional Court has still to hear and determine a constitutional complaint by the German IP lawyer, Dr Ingve Björn Stjerna, on the constitutionality of the UPC Agreement and that may take more than the 11 months in which the UK remains a member of the EU (see  One Year to Brexit - Are Rumours of the Death of the Unified Patent Court Agreement Greatly Exaggerated?   29 March ...

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...

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...

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...

Entrance to Trinity College, Cambridge © 2017 Gita Mistry: all rights reserved Licensed with kind permission of the author Jane Lambert I spent last week at the  Cambridge IP Law Summer School  at Downing College.   It was a rare opportunity to listen to some of the leading practitioners in intellectual property law in beautiful surroundings in the company of some very bright young men and women from around the world.  It was also an opportunity to catch up with several old acquaintances whom I had met through the International Bar Association, Licensing Executives Society or World Intellectual Property Organization. The persons who attended the course came from a variety of backgrounds. Some were recently qualified associates from several leading law firms. A few were trainees.  One came from a major pharmaceutical company.  Another worked in-house. There were several civil servants. One attendee ca...

Jane Lambert In my June UPC Ratification Update 5 June 2017 I wrote: "There is every chance that the Court will open its doors before the end of this year." Famous last words! Two days later the UPC Preparatory Committee wrote that "the previously announced target date for the entry into operation of the UPC, envisaged for December 2017, cannot be maintained" (see   UPC – Timetable Update – June 2017 7 June 2017 UPC website). For once it is not out fault. Even though we are negotiating terms for exiting the European Union (see Brexit Briefing June 2017   30 June 2017 NIPC News) we remain on course to ratify the UPC Agreement well before we go. The last legislative hurdle is the ratification of the Protocol on Privileges and Immunities of the Unified Patent Court  and that will be done by The Unified Patent Court (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2017 a draft of which has been laid before Parliament together with an explanatory memorandum . ...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert A lot has happened since my last Brexit briefing in January 2017: HMG has published its white papers on exiting from, and new partnership with, the European Union  and its " great repeal bill "; The Prime Minister sought unsuccessfully to take advantage of a massive lead in the opinion polls to increase her parliamentary majority in order to strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations; Negotiations have commenced between the British government and the EU and terms of reference have been agreed ; The Commission's Art 50 Task Force has created a very useful microsite  on the Brexit negotiations with some very useful publications including position papers on ongoing judicial and administrative procedures  and  Judicial Cooperation in Civil and Commercial Matters ; The Queen's speech has survived an amendment requiring the UK to remain in the customs union and single market but not without a substantial re...

Jane Lambert The blockade of Qatar by three of its partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council which I discussed in How will the Blockade of Qatar affect IP Law in the GCC Countries? 7 June NIPC Gulf reminds us that those countries have always been important to the United Kingdom. We sell a lot of goods am services to them and they supply us with oil and gas.  We have invested heavily in their economies and they have invested in ours. Those countries would have become even more important to us in that they would have been looking to us and other advanced countries to help them develop new industries and technologies for when the oil runs out and we would have been looking to do more business with them after Brexit. Because of the importance of this region to the UK, I started some years ago the NIPC Gulf blog  which follows legal developments in the region that are likely to affect this country and vice versa .  As I emphasize in the blog;s  About pa...

Amsterdam Photo Massimo Catarinella Source Wikipedia Creative Commons Licence Jane Lambert In Paper 2 of the Brexit papers    Access to the EU legal services market The Bar Council Brexit Working Group reminded us that "the UK legal services market is a significant revenue generator for the Exchequer, worth £25.7 billion in total, employing approximately 370,000 people. Much of its work comes from overseas: "In 2015, of the 1,100 cases registered at the Commercial Court, more than two-thirds had one non-UK based party to proceedings." That would probably be true of the Patents Court where the world's leading pharmaceutical and consumer electronics companies settle their disputes and to a large extent the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court. Net exports of legal services generated an estimated £3.3 billion in 2015. Even though it is more expensive to litigate in common law countries than in most civil law jurisdictions businesses...

Jane Lambert There have been four important developments since I delivered IP Planning for Brexit   to an invited audience of specialist solicitors and patent and trade mark attorneys in chambers on 7 Dec 2016. First, the Bar Council published a set of papers that had been contributed by the specialist bar associations on the legal issues arising from Brexit and coordinated by Hugh Mercer QC's Brexit working group under the title  The Brexit Papers .   In a foreword, the Chair of the Bar explained that the purpose of those papers was "to help the Government evaluate a range of pressing public interest concerns arising from the UK’s decision to withdraw from the EU. These include such matters as cross-country co-operation for the speedy arrest of suspects, child protection across the EU, ensuring firms of all sizes can compete and trade profitably, managing changes to intellectual property law so that our creative industries can flourish, and maintaining curr...

Author Copyleft Licence AIGA Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert In her speech on  National and International-level concerns and developments regarding the IP landscape   which she delivered on 29 June 2016 to the British group of European Practitioners in Intellectual Property, Lady Neville-Rolfe, the Minister for Intellectual Property said: "The UK has one of the world’s best intellectual property environments. The changes that will be triggered by the outcome of last Thursday’s vote will not alter that. You can continue to expect outstanding, professionally delivered rights granting services including design rights; and copyright owners can expect that the framework will support creativity. The UK will continue to be envied around the world for the quality of its enforcement environment. We will continue to lead in international IP discussions. We will continue our work to build an environment that allows innovative and creative businesses across the U...

Jane Lambert Our IP system, which is ranked by TaylorWessing as one of the best in the world (see The Global Intellectual Property Index ) consists of some rights that subsist under national law and others that subsist under EU law. When we eventually leave the EU, those rights that subsist under EU law such as the EU trade mark and the Community design will fall away. I discussed those consequences generally in What Sort of IP Framework do we need after Brexit and what are we likely to get?   3 July 2016. In this article I consider how those changes will affect the British fashion industry which relies on EU trade marks and Community designs more than most. I have chosen this industry because I have conducted seminars on IP and fashion in London and Leeds (see  IP and Fashion Law   12 Sept 2015 London IP and Tech,  IP and Fashion Seminar - 7 Oct 2015   20 Sept 2015 and  Second Course on IP and the Fashion Industry   27 May 2016), ...