NIPC News

Jane Lambert According to the Intellectual Property Office's latest  Facts and Figures , there were 382 applications for UK patents from Wales in 2017. That was more than the 158 from Northern Ireland and 296 Northeast England but considerably less than the 2,585 applications from London and the 2,067 from the Southeast. Developments that may make a difference are the opening of the Menai Science Park (M-SParc)    in Angelsey on 1 March 2018 and the construction of the Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus .  Like the Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre in Bangor, these are initiatives of two of Wales's research universities to stimulate innovations and economic growth in their local areas. There are signs that those initiatives are working.  I attended "Pitch Perfect" at M-SParc on 1 March 2019 and wrote about the event in A Good Way to spend St David's Day   (2 March 2019).  There were some very good proposals indeed and I thin...

Jane Lambert If there is one thing that the IPO is good at it is writing reports which is just as well as it was ranked 12th in 2012 in the the list of top 15 patent offices by number of patent applications which was the last year that the World Intellectual Property Office ("WIPO") published that particular league table (see page 17 of WIPO IP Facts and Figures 2012 ). No doubt it will slip still further after unitary patents become available because why would anyone want a monopoly of an invention for a small, crowded, offshore island which came within an ace of fragmentation last September when they can get a European patent for nearly the whole of the EU as though it were a single state? S.21 (1) of the Intellectual Property Act 2014 requires the Secretary of State before the end of the period of 6 months beginning with the end of each financial year to: "lay before Parliament a report setting out— (a) the Secretary of State’s opinion of the exten...