NIPC News

Design Museum, London Author Anthony O'Neill   Licence CC BY-SA 2.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Every so often, the government of the day has a bash at changing design law.  The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 abolished copyright as a means of protecting product designs, introduced a new intellectual property right known as unregistered design right and modified the Registered Designs Act 1949.  That statute was further modified by the Registered Design Regulations, which implemented Directive 98/71/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 October 1998 on the legal protection of designs.  Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 of 12 December 2001 on Community designs introduced two more IP rights known respectively as registered and unregistered Community designs.  The Intellectual Property Act 2014 brought further modifications to both registered designs and unregistered design rights.  Brexit abolished regist...

Author US Government Licence Public domain Source     Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Since I discussed the Intellectual Property Office's consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence  in  UK Government Launches Consultation on AI and Copyright   on 16 Dec 2024, HM Government has published its  AI Opportunities Action Plan , the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change its Rebooting Copyright: How the UK Can Be a  Global Leader in the Arts and AI   white paper and the World Artificial Intelligence Film Festival  is about to open in Nice. Until recently, attention has focused on the negatives of AI.  The late Stephen Hawking warned that it could end human existence (see Rory Cellan-Jones, Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind   2 Dec 2014).  Others worried that it could reinforce inequalities between sections of society or bolster repression. In his foreword to the Tony Blair Institute white pape...

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...

Source I PO Press Release 17 Dec 2024  Licence   OGLv2.0   Crown Copyright   Jane Lambert The litigation between Getty Images and Stability AI which I discussed in  Copyright and Artificial Intelligence - Getty Images (US) Inc and Others v Stability AI Ltd   on 12 Dec 2023 in NIPC Law shows the need for greater clarity in our copyright law as to the respective rights of content producers and software developers to use materials on the internet to train artificial intelligence models,   In response to that concern the Intellectual Property Office in conjunction with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the  Department for Culture, Media and Sport  has launched a 10-week consultation entitled Copyright and Artificial Intelligence   on how the government can ensure the UK’s legal framework for AI and copyright supports the UK creative industries and AI sector together. The main proposal is to amend the Copyright,...

  Jane Lambert About 30 years ago, I attended a workshop on the arbitration of intellectual property disputes. The speakers included  Dr Francis Gurry  and His Honour Peter Ford.  At that time, Dr Gurry was an Australian academic who had written a rather good book on the law of confidence . He went on to become Director-General of the WIPO. Peter Ford was the first judge of the Patents County Court which was the predecessor to the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court ("IPEC"). Two alternative dispute resolution services were set up as a result of that workshop.  One was an arbitration and mediation panel attached to the Patents County Court under the leadership of Prof. Bryan Niblett.  I was a founder member.   I am not sure whether we ever had a case,  Certainly, nothing was referred to me and the panel was disbanded after a few years.   The other was the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") Arbitration and Mediation...

Author   Andrew Woodvine   Licence CC BY-SA 2.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Yesterday I delivered a seminar on intellectual property law to the teams working on research, innovation, commercialization and partnership support for  Bangor University . They were the professionals who negotiate licence and consultancy agreements and set up spin-off companies to exploit research carried out at the University. I gave PowerPoint presentations on the following topics between 14:00 and 17:00 with short breaks for questions and answers: An overview of intellectual property law covering the difference between intellectual property and intellectual assets, categorization of intellectual property rights, how brands , designs , technology and creativity are protected, the main features of patents , registered designs and supplementary unregistered designs , copyrights , rights in performances , unregistered design rights , trade marks , passing off and ob...

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....

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert A time-honoured way of proving the existence of a document on a particular day is to place it in a sealed envelope and post it to oneself or a trusted third party.  The envelope would bear a postmark proving the date and place of posting of the envelope.  If the seal was intact and there was no obvious tampering with the envelope it would prove that the ideas expressed in the document existed on the date of posting.  Often it proved other things such as the originator of the idea or at least the author of the document. In the United States, the exercise was called a "poor man's patent" possibly because it could sometimes identify the person who was entitled to apply for a patent before the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (Public Law 112-29 26 Sept 2011) .  However, it was and is used here to prove the authorship of a copyright work or the originator of a trade secret.  The system of source code escrow is simply a...

Standard YouTube Licence  Jane Lambert Improvements in broadcasting and recording technologies in the 20th century created the need for new intellectual property rights known as rights in performances  to protect the revenues of actors, dancers, musicians. singers and other performers as well as those of their broadcasters and film and sound recording studios in the broadcasts and recordings of their work.  In the United Kingdom, the rights of such performers are protected by Part II of the  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 .  Performers who are UK nationals or residents enjoy similar rights in other countries by virtue of the International Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations of 26 Oct 1961("Rome Convention") . Developments in digital technology towards the end of the last century required a strengthening of those rights which resulted in the  WIPO Performances and Phonograms ...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert On 26 April of each and every year, the world's intellectual property practitioners celebrate World Intellectual Property Day . It falls on the anniversary of the day the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization  ("WIPO") came into force.  Each year the day has a different theme.  The theme for 2020 is "Innovate for a Green Future," According to the WIPO's World IP Day index page: "We explore how a balanced and robust IP system can support the emergence of a green economy that works with and not against the earth’s life-support systems. We look at how the patent system fosters innovation and the development and diffusion of eco-friendly technologies that enable us tackle the climate crisis and build a green future; how design thinking and design rights together support the optimal use of resources and enable designers to invest their time and talent in creating useful, attrac...

Jane Lambert I hope all my readers had a good Christmas and I wish them a happy and prosperous New Year, A hot topic for the New Year is likely to be the legal protection of inventions, artistic and literary works, designs and other intellectual assets that are created by machines.  Three of the papers of the Life Science IP Conference which was held at at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel on 26 and 27 Nov 2019 addressed the topic as did two of the papers at the International Copyright Law Conference  which was held in London a few days later.  Francis Gurry , the Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (the UN specialist agency for IP) discussed the subject in an interview entitled Intellectual property in a data-driven world   which appeared in the October issue of the WIPO Magazine. This is not a new subject.  I can remember articles and conference papers on the topic for as long as I have been at the Bar.  ...

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 ...

Author AbRo9992 Reproduced with permission of the author Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert Yesterday I attended the pitching event that I mentioned in "Pitch Perfect" - Funding Opportunities for Small and Medium Enterprises in Northwest Wales   15 Feb 2019.  It took place on  St David's Day  which coincided with the first anniversary of the opening of M-SParc (the Menai science park) . For those who are not familiar with Anglesey, the park is located near Gaerwen , just to the north and west of the famous village with the 58 letter name .  The park is open to the public during normal business hours and is worth visiting for the Tanio cafe  alone. The event took place in the science park's atrium.  Though not all the seats were filled, the event was well attended.  The audience was made up of competitors for the "Flash Pitch", "Student Pitch" and "Big Pitch" contests, business support professionals and members of the local...

Jane Lambert Regulation (EU) 2017/1128 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2017 on cross-border portability of online content services in the internal market is known as "the Portability Regulation." It a sensible piece of legislation that should enable subscribers to online services to continue to receive the content that they have paid for when visiting another member state.   The reason for the Regulation is that copyright is territorial. A subscriber in the UK is licensed to receive content under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 but not under the legislation of any other member state.  As it was made by the Council and European Parliament the Regulation will come into force automatically on 20 March 2018 pursuant to art 11 (2).  However, as it will affect existing legislation and it will need to be enforced.  To make provision for this Regulation the Intellectual Property Office has published a draft statuto...