NIPC News

Copyright 2023 WIPO  Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert The WIPO's World Intellectual Property Indicators 2023   and the statistic that caught my eye is that India filed 31.6% more patent applications in 2022 than in the previous year. According to the accompanying press release, it extended an 11-year run of growth unmatched by any other country among the top 10 filers. India overtook the UK in the list of countries that filed the most patent applications in 2022.   There was a 1.7% growth in the worldwide number of patent applications in 2022 (3,457,400 in 2022 compared to 3,400,500 in 2021.  Some 1.58 million (or nearly half) of those patent applications came from China.  The USA came second with 505,539 applications, Japan third with 405,361, South Korea fourth with 272,315 and Germany fifth with 155,896.  The UK lay eighth with 53,536 between India with 55,718 and Switzerland with 49,077.   There was, however, a sharp...

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 ...

Jane Lambert The World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") published its World Intellectual Property Indicators 2018   on 16 Oct 2019.  In September 2019, the Intellectual Property Office published  Facts and figures: patent, trade mark, design and hearing data: 2018   for the UK. The headline figures that appear on page 7 of the WIPO report is that there were over 3.3 million patent applications in 2018 which is 5.2% above the figure for 2017. China accounted for 46.4% of those applications with over 1.5 million. That was an increase of 11.6% on the number of Chinese applications for the previous year. The USA was number 2 with 597, a 1.6% decline on the figure for the previous year.  Japan came a distant third with 313,567 applications. China accounted for more than half of the world's 14.3 million trade mark applications with 7.4 million applications. Again the USA came in second with 640,181 and Japan third with 512,156.  Chin...

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 . ...

Jane Lambert Art 89 (1) of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court  provides that the Agreement will come into force on the 1st day of the 4th month after the deposit with the Commission of the 13th instrument of ratification or accession including deposits of such instruments by France, Germany and the United Kingdom. According to the Council website , 12 states have deposited instruments of ratification. The last of these was Italy which deposited its instrument on on 12 Feb 2017.  Italy's ratification is particularly significant for two reasons. The first is that it had opposed the unitary patent in C-274/11 - Spain and Italy v Commission and others     [2013] EUECJ C-274/11 on the grounds that the implementing legislation was incompatible with EU law. The second reason why Italy's participation is significant is that it will be entitled to host one of the sections of the Central Division of the Court of First Instance should the UK be obliged ...

Last month I uploaded my slides for my presentation to the IALCI seminar on enforcing intellectual property rights in England and Wales . Here is a show reel of the highlights of the seminar.

Jane Lambert IALCI stands for  The international association of lawyers for the creative industries . It was founded in March 2013, during Paris fashion week to provide useful and up-to-date business and legal know-how and solutions to the creative industries.  Its main goal is to enhance the collective knowledge of the creative industries, by organising seminars, webinars and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS), talks, google hangouts, podcasts, TV programmes about, and by publishing articles, newsletters, blogs and books on, business and legal topics of critical importance to the creative industries and entertainment sector. One of those seminars took place on Tuesday, 10 Feb 2015 on the law of luxury goods series: intellectual property – how to protect, manage and monetize the know-how and intangible capital of luxury and fashion brands . Alexander Rozycki  and I spoke at that seminar.  My presentation, which appears above, was one of three talks...