NIPC News

  Jane Lambert Every 5 November we celebrate the foiling of a plot to assassinate King James I and Members of Parliament in 1605 with fireworks.  This year there will be a different kind of fireworks at the Chicago Booth Conference Centre  when many of the world's IP practitioners and scholars meet for CTC Legal Events'  Winter IP Conference to discuss the latest developments in SEP licensing, copyright and LLM training and other urgent topics.   This year's conference is the third such event. I participated in last year's and wrote about it in CTC Legal' s Second  London IP Conference on 10 Nov 2025. This year's format has been redesigned to concentrate the patent and trade mark forums and other discussions into a single day. I have been invited back this year to talk about the Supreme Court's judgment in Tesla, Inc and another v InterDigital Patent Holdings, Inc and others [2026] UKSC 27, which I discussed in Patents - Tesla Inc v InterDigita...

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...

Entrance to Trinity College, Cambridge © 2017 Gita Mistry: all rights reserved Licensed with kind permission of the author Jane Lambert I spent last week at the  Cambridge IP Law Summer School  at Downing College.   It was a rare opportunity to listen to some of the leading practitioners in intellectual property law in beautiful surroundings in the company of some very bright young men and women from around the world.  It was also an opportunity to catch up with several old acquaintances whom I had met through the International Bar Association, Licensing Executives Society or World Intellectual Property Organization. The persons who attended the course came from a variety of backgrounds. Some were recently qualified associates from several leading law firms. A few were trainees.  One came from a major pharmaceutical company.  Another worked in-house. There were several civil servants. One attendee ca...

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 . ...

Falling to BITs: the Eli Lilly and Philip Morris Cases NIPC Law  8 April 2017 Do the awards in Philip Morris v Australia and Eli Lilly v Canada mean that IP owners can't claim compensation from foreign governments if those governments fail to enforce their IP laws? Probably not, because nothing in those cases affects the principle that an investor that suffers expropriation of his IP rights can recover compensation for such expropriation .  More IP Yorkshire 10 April 2018 I was one of the speakers at CIPA's York meeting at the Principal Hotel. The others were Louise Edwards of Mazars, David Bloom of Safeguard IP and Kalim Yasseen of the IPO. Tony Rollins chaired the meeting. I spoke about litigation after 28 March 2017 when the EU treaties will cease to apply and considered the litigation framework we are likely to find then. Louise discussed changes to patent box relief in the Finance Act 2016 and the Finance Bill. David talked about all the new products in IP...

Jane Lambert There have been four important developments since I delivered IP Planning for Brexit   to an invited audience of specialist solicitors and patent and trade mark attorneys in chambers on 7 Dec 2016. First, the Bar Council published a set of papers that had been contributed by the specialist bar associations on the legal issues arising from Brexit and coordinated by Hugh Mercer QC's Brexit working group under the title  The Brexit Papers .   In a foreword, the Chair of the Bar explained that the purpose of those papers was "to help the Government evaluate a range of pressing public interest concerns arising from the UK’s decision to withdraw from the EU. These include such matters as cross-country co-operation for the speedy arrest of suspects, child protection across the EU, ensuring firms of all sizes can compete and trade profitably, managing changes to intellectual property law so that our creative industries can flourish, and maintaining curr...