NIPC News

Jane Lambert While hardly unexpected. the confirmation given yesterday to Joff Wild  and others that "the UK will not be seeking involvement in the UP/UPC system." is nonetheless regrettable.   No country stood to gain more from the Unified Parent Court and the unitary patent than the UK because it would have reduced considerably the costs of patent prosecution in Europe and patent enforcement in the UK.  That is why both the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property  and the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth  urged HM government to push for a single European patent for the UK and other EU member states with a unified court for the resolution of disputes over such patents. The excuse given to Mr Wild and other journalists for this country's volte-face is that: "Participating in a court that applies EU law and bound by the CJEU is inconsistent with our aims of becoming an independent self-governing nation.” That was ju...

Intellectual Property Office Crown copyright, Licence Intellectual Property Office Jane Lambert One of the recommendations of Prof. Hargreaves's review of intellectual property and growth  which was commissioned and largely implemented by the Coalition government in 2011 was that "The IPO should draw up plans to improve accessibility of the IP system to smaller companies who will benefit from it. This should involve access to lower cost providers of integrated IP legal and commercial advice." The Intellectual Property Office has tried to carry out that recommendation by developing support tools for use by academics, business owners, entrepreneurs, investors, professional advisors and other members of the public.  There is now a portal for those tools on the government's website at  https://www.ipo.gov.uk/ip-support/ . The portal looks like this: There are 9 colour coded icons: IP Equip IP Heakthcheck B2B Toolkit ...

Jane Lambert In November 2010, a few months after it had assumed office, the Coalition Government commissioned Prof. Ian Hargreaves  to review how the intellectual property framework supports growth and innovation. His terms of reference  expressly included "the cost and complexity to SMEs of accessing IP services to help them to protect and exploit IP". At para 9.2 of his report,  Digital Opportunity A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth , which   Hargreaves presented in May 2011, he identified "gaps in IP knowledge among SMEs and gaps in IP services available to them" which impaired the "ability of young and innovative UK firms to realise the potential value of IP".  That mattered, according to Hargreaves "because of the growing importance of smaller IP intensive firms to future growth."  Hargreaves found that the reason for those gaps was that current service provision was not configured as well as it could have been to ...

Jane Lambert The Intellectual Property Bill received royal assent on the 14 May, just over a year after it was introduced into the House of Lords and is now an Act . It is a very short statute consisting of 24 sections divided into Four Parts together with a Schedule. It enables the Secretary of State to implement the Council Agreement on the Unified Patent Court  and the Hague Agreement , expands the scope of the Intellectual Property patents opinion service and establishes an opinions service for designs and provides for appeals from hearing officers in designs matters to be heard by an Appointed Person as in trade marks. It also tidies up s.213 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the Registered Designs Act 1949 and the Patents Act 1977.  For a detailed analysis of the legislation, see my article The Intellectual Property Bill 28 May 2013 NIPC Law and the presentation by Alex Roxycki and me. The Bill's only controversial provision was clause 1...