NIPC News

Jane Lambert  When I was called to the Bar our design law was relatively straightforward. Features of shape, configuration, pattern or ornament applied to an article by any industrial process or means with eye appeal that were new or original could be registered under the Registered Designs Act 1949 for 5 renewable periods of 5 years each up to a total of 25 years. Design drawings for manufactured products were artistic works within the meaning of s.3 (1) of the Copyright Act 1956 and so long as the drawing was original copyright protected the design for the life of the author of the drawing plus 50 years. All this came to an end on 1 Aug 1989 when the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 came into force.  The Act overhauled the Registered Designs Act 1949 and provided that it was "not an infringement of any copyright in a design document or model recording or embodying a design for anything other than an artistic work or a typeface to make an article to the design or t...

Howard Building Author TheWub   Licence CC BY-SA 3.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Except for 2020 when the Informa IP Law Simmer Schoo l took place online and 2021 when it was held in December,  I have chaired the session on patent law and delivered a talk on FRAND  at the Howard Building in Downing College Cambridge for the last 5 years.  I shall do so again this year between the 7 and 11 Aug 2023.  There is an excellent programme  of talks from distinguished speakers .  Attendees are housed in college and fun s ocial events are arranged every night .  Anyone wishing to attend the course can book here . A lot has happened in my topic since last year.   There has been Mr Justice Mellor's judgment in  I Interdigital Technology Corp and others v Lenovo Group Ltd and others [2023] EWHC 539 (Pat) on 16 March 2023.  That was the second time that an English court had been called upon to determine what ...

St Salvator's College, St Andrews © 2018 Jane Elizabeth Lambert:  All rights reserved:   Jane Lambert It is often forgotten that law was once taught at St Andrews though not always in the town itself. St Andrews lost its law school in 1967 when Queen's College in Dundee became a separate university. Many St Andreans continued to make their way to the law after 1967 but they obtained their legal education elsewhere. In 2015. an Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research was established at St Andrews.  According to its website, it is "the home of outstanding cross-disciplinary research in the fields of law, legal history and constitutionalism."  The Institute's website also states that the University is home to a vibrant student law society .  I visited that society's website and noticed that its  partners included several leading law firms but no English or Welsh chambers or Scottish stables.  Curious as to why that should be, I contacted the soci...

Punts on the Cam © 2017 Jane Lambert: all rights reserved Jane Lambert This year's Cambridge IP Law Summer School lived up to expectations . Cambridge is delightful at any time of the year.  It was good to see it just before Christmas when the winter school took place. The course is stimulating even if it is held online as happened in 2020 .  But the best place to hold it is Cambridge and Summer is the best time. The course takes place at Downing College which has produced many of the country's leading practitioners and academic lawyers.  One of them was Christopher Stothers  whose talk on arbitration of intellectual property disputes was one of the highlights of my week.  We had a lot of good speakers from several countries. Delegates came from Belgium, Denmark, the Irish Republic amd Saudi Arabia as well as the UK. IP law has changed significantly since our departure from the EU. Our government is negotiating free trade and other agreements with the government...

Jane Lambert Since 2017 I have been invited to speak at the Cambridge IP Law Summer School.  I shared my experiences in Cambridge IP Law Summer School 2017   on 20 Aug 2017 and Cambridge IP Law Summer School 2019 on 19 Aug 2019. I am sorry to say that Downing College cannot host us this year because of the COVID-19 emergency.   Happily, not all is lost because Informa , which runs the course, has made arrangements to hold it online (see IP Law Summer School     10 to 20 Aug 2020). I shall deliver two papers: "TMT A SEP & FRAND": Standard essential patents and FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms for the licensing of such patents on 12 Aug 2020 at 15:20; and "Intellectual Property Enforcement Measures, Especially Anti-piracy Measures in the Digital Environment"  on 20 Aug 2020 at 14:25. When I was invited to give the first talk in November we had every hope of a decision of the Supreme Court on the topic....

Downing College Cambridge Jane Lambert Last week I was invited back to Cambridge by Knect365 to speak to the Cambridge IP Law Summer School  at Downing College. I was asked to repeat the talk on IP disputes and bilateral investment treaties that I gave to the 2017 summer school  and to mention the research on IP enforcement in the digital environment that Professor Frederick Mostert and I had carried out for the Advisory Committee on Enforcement of the WIPO (see Mostert and Lambert  Study on Intellectual Property Enforcement Measures, Especially Anti-piracy Measures in the Digital Environment – Executive Summary   and the full report) . I also chaired the final day's session on "Contentious IP". As in 2017, this year's course took place in Downing College's  Howard Building .  That building consists of a ground floor common room with a licensed bar and an auditorium on the floor above.  Morning coffee, afternoon tea and some ...

I started this family of blogs on 22 Aug 2005 with Porridge on Patent Infringement , a sceptical response to the European Commission's  Proposal for a Council framework decision to strengthen the criminal law framework to combat intellectual property offences .   That article has attracted 170 page hits over the years. The blog has grown over the years and has now received 737,868 page hits including 36,761 in May which was my best month ever. My readers come from all over the world with the biggest audiences in the USA 269.545, the UK 120,635, Russia 70,528, Germany 39,204 and the Republic of Ireland 34,178. My most popular articles have been Copyright in Photographs: Temple Island Collections and Creation Records   15 Jan 2012 which attracted 40,022 hits; I njunctions against ISPs Part III: Dramatico Entertainment Ltd and Others v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd. and Others   21 Feb 2012, 18,318 hits; The New Small Claims IP Jurisdiction   5...

Downing College, Cambridge Photo Cactusback Jane Lambert Earlier this week I mentioned Juris Conferences LLC's  Eleventh Annual Investment Treaty Arbitration Conference – Technology, IP and Investor-State Arbitration at the Washington Plaza Hotel in Washington DC on 25 April 2017. I suggested that it was particularly timely in view of the final award in Eli Lilly & Co. v Canada 16 March 2017 which I discussed in the Falling to BITs: the Eli Lilly and Philip Morris Cases   8 April 2017 NIPC Law. I canvassed support for a similar conference on that topic in England and received one positive reply through Linkedin. The next day I received an invitation from the organizers of the Cambridge IP Law Summer School  to speak on the subject at this year's summer school at Downing College, Cambridge between 14 and 18 Aug 2017. This should be a splendid occasion.  The agenda looks fascinating. Some of the country's leading practitioners in IP la...

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...

Huddersfield Media Centre, Source The Media Centre Jane Lambert Since 2004 I have supported Yorkshire businesses and their professional advisers by offering specialist advice on intellectual property and technology law and representation before the Patents and Patents County Courts, Chancery Division and Intellectual Property Office tribunals as the only full time specialist intellectual barrister outside London. I have provided those services from Huddersfield Media Centre . Although my practice is now managed by Stephen Broom and George Scanlan I am still there. You can still get through to me on 01484 590090 or 0113 320 3232 or by filling in my contact form . The big difference is that I am no longer on my own. I can now call upon support from my excellent colleagues in our IP and Technology Law Group as well as those from other departments such as Atlas Tax Chambers whose members include Anne Fairpo , an authority on IP and tax. O...