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 Muhammad Karns - Judicial Office Twitter feed., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78284579 Jane Lambert Earlier today I uploaded to Slideshare a presentation that I gave in February 2023 to members of the University of St Andrews Law Society  entitled A Career at the Bar of England and Wales .  I did so because I get a lot of enquiries on how to make a career in IP, as well as requests for work experience.  I had just come across a website called IP Careers   which lists careers advice , courses ,  jobs  and news .  Its only drawback is that it focuses on opportunities for patent and trade mark attorneys and openings at the Intellectual Property Office and European Patent Office but does not seem to have much for barristers or solicitors specializing in intellectual property. A website that does cover all the intellectual property professions is Careers in Ideas  which is managed by IP Inclusive , a great organizati...

Dickson Poon School of Law Author Vladgrigore   Licence CC BY-SA 4.0   S ource Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Last November the University of St Andrews Law Society  invited me to return to my alma mater to judge a mooting competition.   I wrote about it in Learning the Law in St Andrews - Mooting   on 6 Nov 2024. Yesterday I was asked by the King's College London Bar and Mooting Society  to join a panel discussion on intellectual property practice.  As I had previously worked with  Professor Frederick Mostert  on a project for the World Intellectual Property Organization which I mentioned in Another Side of the WIPO   on   5 Sept 2019, I was delighted to return to King's College . On arriving at the college's porters' lodge I met my colleague, Mark Engelman,   He old me that he had also been invited to sit on the panel.  Shortly afterwards we were joined by officers of the Society who led us through the securi...

Author Bashereyre  Licence   Jane Lambert Eleven years ago to this day, I accepted an invitation to join 4-5 Gray's Inn Square as a tenant.  One of the reasons why I did so was because of the set's strength in arbitration,  We have a strong panel that includes members with experience in intellectual property such as  James Bridgeman SC  and  Elizabeth Nicholls  as well as me. On Thursday 8 Feb 2024 I took part in a panel discussion on "Damages Issues in IP and Life Science Disputes at the Butchers' Hal l in the City of London. My fellow panellists were  Amanda Ebbutt of TaylorWessing,  Andrew Tepperman of Charles River Associates and  Epaminontas Triantafilou of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Our moderator was  Shreya Gupta of Oxera Consulting. Our panel discussion was one of three sessions at GAR LIVE on Damages , a half-day symposium presented by the Global Arbitration  Review .  The other sessions we...

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...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert Sunday was World Creativity and Innovation Day  as well as Easter. By a resolution of  27 April 2017 , the UN General Assembly designated the 21 April as World Creativity and Innovation Day. All UN member states, UN organizations and other international and regional organizations, as well as civil society, including non-governmental organizations and individuals are invited "to observe the day in an appropriate manner and in accordance with national priorities, in order to raise awareness of the role of creativity and innovation in problem-solving and, by extension, economic, social and sustainable development." At least one British institution is marking the day.   I spotted this post on the Royal Opera House's Facebook page: It was, in fact, the House's post that drew my attention to the event and made me look into it. Creativity and innovation are what intellectual property protects. It is, therefore, appr...

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 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...

Jane Lambert Instead of reflecting on a brilliant performance of  Swan Lake at the Lowry by the Birmingham Royal Ballet, I spent much of Thursday evening reading Justice for Wales. That is the title of a pamphlet written by Sir Roderick Evans QC and others calling for the establishment of a separate judiciary and court system for Wales.  My copy came from my good friend and colleague David Hughes who is a member of my chambers'  intellectual property team . I googled "Sir Roderick Evans QC" and "Justice for Wales" but was unable to find the publication on the worldwide web. The nearest I came was  Top lawyers campaign for a separate justice system for Wales   23 Sept 2015 Wales on Line . The pamphlet makes a good case for the reform of the English and Welsh justice system generally. For instance: "In its report entitled ‘Doing Business 2015’, the World Bank ranked the UK only 36th in the world for ‘Enforcing Contracts – how judicial efficien...

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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...

Jane Lambert Not long ago most commercial practitioners spent a lifetime in the law without ever having to advise on an intellectual property matter or coming anywhere near the Patents Court. It was a specialist field with its own court having its own rules, the judges and practitioners of which spoke an almost impenetrable argot. Most law schools ignored IP except as a specialist option with the result that many practitioners did not have a clue what it was all about. There were horror stories of solicitors receiving writs for writing the same sort of letter before action as they would write in any other case and it was all horribly expensive. Best left to specialist law firms like Bird & Bird and Bristows and the handful of specialist counsel who knew what they were doing. The internet and programmes like Dragons' Den    have changed all that. Clients often with quite small businesses are now coming to you with questions about software licensing and doma...