NIPC News

World Intellectual Property Organization, Geneva Author Emmanuel Berrod  Licence CC BY-SA 4.0   S ource     Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert I mentioned the government's consultation on standard essential patents in  Latest Consultation on Standard Essential Patent Licensing   on 18 July 2025.  One of the topics is "Tell us how alternative dispute resolution services work for standard essential patent disputes."   According to its "WIPO ADR for FRAND Disputes" page , the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre has administered some 80 WIPO mediation cases relating to FRAND licensing negotiations. Here are examples of some of the disputes that the Centre has handled: "Mediations between large SEP holders and implementers in Asia and Europe to facilitate the agreement of FRAND licensing terms. Requests for WIPO Mediation relating to licensing negotiations between patent pool administrators and implementers in relation to ongoing unsuccessful...

By Kai Hendry from London, UK - Televised Star Craft, - Stork vs JJU 1, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2531978   Jane Lambert According to the European Union Intellectual Property Office, the worldwide e-sports industry is worth over US$200 billion and has about 3 billion players (see James Nurton Game on: Navigating intellectual property in esports ,  10 June 2024 EU IPO website).  The appeal of e-sports is likely to increase with the establishment of the Olympic Esports Games .  A lot of money is invested in branding, technology and content creation, which will be protected by trade marks, patents, copyrights and other intellectual property rights. Infringement and licensing of those rights are likely to give rise to disputes between parties in different countries that cannot conveniently be resolved by litigation.  The Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC ) and the World Intellectual Property Organization have recently launched...

  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 SSolbergj   Australia_(orthographic_projection).svg : Creative Commons Attribution Shae Alike 3.0 unreported licence Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert I should like to congratulate my colleague, Caroline Kenny QC , on her election as President of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in Australia  (see  Top QC elected President of Australian global arbitration body   30 May 2017). Caroline is one of several distinguished international tenants of 4-5 Gray's Inn Square. We have a distinguished team of arbitrators and mediators based in the United Kingdom of which I am one.  I specialize in resolving intellectual property and technology disputes and am a member of the WIPO's panel of neutrals . I am also on the IPO's list of mediation providers . Finally, the London branch of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators is holding a seminar on ADR and film disputes at the offices of Herbert Smith Freehills at Exchange House, Primrose...

Jane Lambert "Litigation should be a last resort" begins para 8 of Practice Direction - Pre-Action Conduct and Protocols which both sides to a dispute are required to follow. The paragraph continues: "As part of a relevant pre-action protocol or this Practice Direction, the parties should consider whether negotiation or some other form of ADR might enable them to settle their dispute without commencing proceedings."  The obligation to consider ways of settling a dispute is not a once-and-for-all step but continues even after a claim form has been issued. What Paragraph 8 means in Practice When I read that paragraph to clients they often have three questions: What is meant by "ADR"? How do I get some of this ADR? and What happens if I don't consider ADR? What is meant by ADR? "ADR" stands for "alternative dispute resolution" which is defined in the Glossary to the Civil Procedure Rules as "Col...

Jane Lambert First Published 2 Nov 2011 JD Supra, Revised 30 Jan 2017 Essentially, there are two ways of resolving any kind of dispute: the parties can agree to settle; or  a third party, such as a judge, arbitrator or hearing officer , imposes a settlement on them.  They are not mutually exclusive. Some issues in a dispute may be settled by one method while other issues may be settled by another. Agreed Settlement There are two routes to an agreed settlement: Direct negotiation between the parties; or Mediation, that is to say, negotiation facilitated by a third party known as “a mediator”. There are also two negotiation strategies, namely positional and principled negotiation. Mediation developed out of principled negotiation. Direct Negotiation P ositional Negotiation:   The parties bargain. One side begins by demanding more than it expects to get while the other offers less than it expects to give. In subsequent exchanges, the pa...

Embedded pursuant to the standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert The Intellectual Property Office has recently uploaded a series of videos to its YouTube channel  which are very short but also very useful. The primer is IP Basics: What is Intellectual Property   and it is followed by films on copyrights. designs , patents and trade marks . Although they have been uploaded for some time they do not seem to have been watched by many people which is a pity because they are a lot better than the advice one can expect from most invention promotion companies or even some lawyers and, of course, they are free. The above video on  IP BASICS: Is Intellectual Property important to my business?   has received only 970 views since the 27 Nov 2015 and a large number of those will have have been made by me. I hope this article may attract more viewers for these films. Good though the IPO animations are there are some that have been produced by other organizations that I l...

' Dream Dance' workshop from Rae Piper on Vimeo .  Jane Lambert As part of the Lincoln Inspired Festival 2014 , the Chantry Dance Company delivered a workshop in which the participants were guided in creating their own modern ballet piece based on the subject of dreams. The piece seen in the video was created by the dancers in just 2 hours! You can read all about it in "Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance"  10 May 2014 Terpsichore. As I noted in  Chantry Dance Summer School  2 Aug 2014 the company does great educational and outreach work bringing dance into prisons and care homes as well as theatres. Ballet Cymru does great work with Gloucester Dance (see  "'Stuck in the Mud' doesn't mean you're stuck"  25 June 2014 Terpsichore ). Valuable educational and outreach work is also done by Northern Ballet and Scottish Ballet. Much of this work depends on sponsorship by businesses and individuals and companies in the...

Lord Esher: "better have his patent infringed .... than have a dispute about a patent." Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert In Ungar v Sugg  (1899) 9 RPC 117 Lord Esher MR said: "A man had better have his patent infringed, or have anything happen to him in this world, short of losing all his family by influenza, than have a dispute about a patent. His patent is swallowed up, and he is ruined." Clearly, there has to be a better way and indeed there is but you have to think and plan ahead. The key to keeping out of court is to anticipate and defuse potential disputes before they arise. The best way to do that is to commission regular intellectual property audits from your lawyers or patent or trade mark attorneys. An IP audit identifies the intellectual assets that you use in your business - that is to say, your brands, designs, technology and works of art and literature (which includes computer software and databases, catalogues and users' manuals a...

Jane Lambert In his Final Report in his Chancery Modernization Review Lord Justice Briggs recommended a closer focus on ADR at case management conferences ( "CMC" ) and, in particular, that "case management should be seen to be directed toward dispute resolution, rather than merely preparation for a full trial which is unlikely to take place." He specifically recommended requirements for parties to address the timing, type of and impediments to ADR in an expanded questionnaire before the first CMC and for the court at the first CMC to give detailed consideration to assisting the parties in the choice and timing of ADR. Traditionally, ADR has been seen as an alternative to litigation rather than a set of options to facilitate the speedy and cost-effective resolution of a dispute. It is perhaps one of the consequences of the decision in Scott v. Avery , (1856) 5 H.L.Cas. 811. In fact, mediation, early neutral evaluation and all the other methods of d...