NIPC News

UK Supreme Court Author Kelsey Farish   Licence CC BY 4.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Last week's Winter Intellectual Property Conference  by CTC Legal Events was different from almost every  IP conference or seminar that I had previously attended.  For a start, there were very few slides.  I had prepared some for my talk on FRAND, as had  Maria-Christina Peyman of Birketts for her review of leading IP cases, but most of the topics were moderated discussions.  Secondly, the conference took place in  the magnificently equipped London campus of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business .  Thirdly, the organizers attracted some of the biggest names in IP, such as Professor Sir Robin Jacob, a former Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal and Sam Williams, Head of Intellectual Property at Siemens.  A lot of information was squeezed into the 5th and 6th of November.  The organizers covered that grou...

By Herbert Baker - https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevecadman/2347434439/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68619795 Downing College, Cambridge Jane Lambert I have been chairing sessions and speaking at the Cambridge IP Law Summer School  on and off since 2017 and have enjoyed every one tremendously but I think this year's was the best ever.  That was because there was an exceptional cohort of attendees drawn from the Civil Service, Magic Circle law firms, Sweden, Turkiye and business and an updated programme which included artificial intelligence, database rights, geographical indications and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. The Summer School took place at Downing College between Monday 12 Aug and Friday 16 Aug 3035. There was a different agenda each day.    The first day's agenda was  "Fundamentals" , the second day's was "Patents" , the third's was " Soft IP" , the fourth's  "...

Author Monsarc Public Domain Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert One of the high points of my year as an intellectual property lawyer has been the Cambridge IP Law Summer School at Downing College, Cambridge. It is addressed by some of the world's leading IP practitioners and scholars.  For the last few years, I have been invited to contribute to their discussions.   Not even Covid19 managed to stop the event though it did change it.  Last year it was held online.  The presentations and the Q & A discussions were, as always, excellent.  The only element that we missed was networking.  Cambridge is a place to learn but it is also a place to have fun.  In previous years, the event organizers Informa Connect had offered all sorts of evening entertainments from a black-tie dinner to punting on the Cam. It was not possible to present those activities online. Narinder Hayer, Informa Connect's organizer, told me that she had hoped to retur...

  Author  Furdur  Source  Wikipedia Jane Lambert The purpose of intellectual property is to protect investment in developing a revenue generating asset. That is the reason for the business strategy that I outlined in Putting IP at the Hear of your Business Plan   2 Jan 2015.  That strategy identifies the optimum legal protection for the intellectual assets likely to contribute most to your business and the steps needed to enforce such protection. For a lot of businesses, the optimum legal protection was an EU trade mark a registered Community design or, in a few cases, a Community plant variety. These ceased to apply to the UK from 23:00 on 31 Dec 2020 though art 54 of the Agreement on the Withdrawal of the UK from the EU  provided for the assets that had been protected by those rights to continue to be protected in the UK by s corresponding British trade mark, registered design or plant variety. The withdrawal agreement ensured continued subsistence...

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....

The WIPO © 2004 Jane Lambert: all rights reserved Jane Lambert WIPO Advisory Committee on Enforcement 14th Session 2 - 4 Sept 2019 The World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO")  is a specialist agency of the United Nations with 192 member states. Its mission is "to lead the development of a balanced and effective international IP system that enables innovation and creativity for the benefit of all." Its mandate, governing body and procedures are set out in the WIPO Convention  to which the British government is a party. One of the WIPO's services is alternative dispute resolution  through arbitration,   mediation  and domain name dispute resolution  and I have been one of its panellists since 2003.  Every year the domain name dispute resolution panellists are invited to Geneva for a day of continuing professional development training.  I have attended every session since 2005 (see Needled in Geneva   18...

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 : Willh26 Licence   Creative Commons  Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert A recent decision of the Court of Appeal to enforce a non-disclosure agreement ("NDA") by means of an interim injunction has led to a promise by the Prime Minister to review the law relating to such agreements (see Court stops Telegraph publishing 'sexual harassment' story   24 Oct 2018 BBC website). While NDAs,  like any legal instrument can be abused, they are a very useful business tool.   They enable inventors to discuss their inventions with potential collaborators and investors before they are ready to apply for patents.  They prevent the disclosure or use of sensitive commercial information that may have taken years to gather.  They allow business relations to continue between parties to potentially damaging disputes. Earlier this year the trade secrecy laws of the 28 member states of the Euro...

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 this article, I am challenging the following myths that are probably responsible for our trailing many of our competitors in the number of patent, design and trade mark applications. Myth #1  There's no point in acquiring an intellectual property right because you can never afford to enforce it. It is probably still the case that England and Wales (and indeed Scotland and Northern Ireland) are among the most expensive countries in the world to bring a full blown patent action.  That is because our legal system provides for close investigation of the evidence and full consideration of the arguments which tends to assure the most just outcome. But most IP cases do not require that degree of scrutiny. For the last 6 ½ years the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (formerly the Patents County Court) has provided a high-quality dispute resolution service where the issues are defined in advance, trials are limited to two days and recoverab...