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...

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,...

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 Over the last few months I have been leading a series of seminars on basic intellectual property law. I presented an introduction and overview on 26 June 2013 and you can download the slides and handout from "Introduction to Intellectual Property" on 1 July 2013. On the 25 Sept 2013 I spoke about branding, that is to say passing off, trade mark registration, geographical indications and domain names. You will find my slides and handout at "Introduction to the Law relating to Branding: Passing off, Trade Marks, Geographical Indications and Domain Names"  4 Oct 2013. On the 27 of this month I shall be talking about patents, confidentiality. semiconductor topographies, plant varieties and database right and you can book for that seminar (which is the final in the series) on our Evenrbrite page . On Wednesday the 30 Oct 2013 I presented a seminar on creative output, that is to say copyright, related rights and designs.  You can download the sli...