NIPC News

US Copyright Office Author Matt Wade Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Source Wikipedia US Copyright Office Jane Lambert Yesterday I received a phone call from an American lawyer who wanted to learn about the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court's Small Claims Track.  The reason she called is that she advises members of the US Congress who have introduced a bill "to establish an alternative dispute resolution program for copyright small claims, and for other purposes."  I answered her questions as well as I could and referred her to the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court's website , the IPEC and Small Claims Track guides  as well as my own writings on the subject.  I also directed her to Judge Hacon's clerk for further information. The ADR programme for copyright small claims proposed by the members of Congress is very different from IPEC's Small Claims Track.  It does not appear to be a co...

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...