NIPC News

Lord Esher: "better have his patent infringed .... than have a dispute about a patent." Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert In Ungar v Sugg  (1899) 9 RPC 117 Lord Esher MR said: "A man had better have his patent infringed, or have anything happen to him in this world, short of losing all his family by influenza, than have a dispute about a patent. His patent is swallowed up, and he is ruined." Clearly, there has to be a better way and indeed there is but you have to think and plan ahead. The key to keeping out of court is to anticipate and defuse potential disputes before they arise. The best way to do that is to commission regular intellectual property audits from your lawyers or patent or trade mark attorneys. An IP audit identifies the intellectual assets that you use in your business - that is to say, your brands, designs, technology and works of art and literature (which includes computer software and databases, catalogues and users' manuals a...

Jane Lambert On Monday 15 April, 2013 I chaired a meeting of the monthly arbitration forum of the Irish branch of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators . The topic was "WIPO Arbitration: Current Trends with Intellectual Property and Domain Name Disputes." The speakers were my colleague, Joseph Dalby of the 4-5 Gray's Inn Square Intellectual Property and Technology Law Group and Kate Colleary , Head of Intellectual Property and Data Protection at the Dublin office of Eversheds . The meeting took place at the Dublin Dispute Resolution Centre  which is a joint venture of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the Irish Bar . It is in the Distillery Building in Church Street, a few hundred yards from the Four Courts where the superior courts sit.  According to the Centre's website: "The centre has four rooms designed specifically for holding arbitrations, in addition to five ancillary breakout / meeting rooms. All rooms have power and data dir...