NIPC News

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...

Author Karl Bodmer  Welsh coracles in America   Jane Lambert Nearly 800 years before the Mimosa set sail for Chubut, Madoc, one of the sons of King Owain ap Gruffudd and a small band of retainers landed near New Bern in North Carolina.  Researchers of the Pre-Columban Civilization Department of Boondock State University have discovered that stone fragments in a hitherto undeciphered script that were discovered on the banks of the Missouri river at the end of the 19th century are in a language closely related to modern Welsh.    Dated about 1500 the fragments trace the history of Madoc's landing in Craven county, their welcome by, and assimilation with, indigenous Americans, their expeditions across the Appalachian mountains and the creation of a brilliant Celtic-Indigenous American civilization known as "the Mandans" that subsisted until the arrival of European settlers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The reason I mention these discoveries is t...

Standard youtube Licence Jane Lambert The Patent Cooperation Treaty ("PCT") is an international agreement that makes it cheaper and easier for inventors or their employers to apply for patents for their inventions in more than one country. Readers who are unfamiliar with the PCT will find a very good video on the agreement on the WIPO website. The treaty came into force in 1978. In every year of the subsistence of the treaty up to 2019, the USA made more applications than any other country.   In 2019 China nosed ahead of the USA with 59,193 applications compared to the USA's 57,499. In 2020 it increased its lead to 68,720 over the USA's 59,230 (see  Annex 1: International patent applications by origin (PCT System)  to the press release  Innovation Perseveres: International Patent Filings via WIPO Continued to Grow in 2020 Despite COVID-19 Pandemic   2 March 2021). The number of applications from the UK also increased from 5,773 in 2019 to 5,9...

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 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 Our IP system, which is ranked by TaylorWessing as one of the best in the world (see The Global Intellectual Property Index ) consists of some rights that subsist under national law and others that subsist under EU law. When we eventually leave the EU, those rights that subsist under EU law such as the EU trade mark and the Community design will fall away. I discussed those consequences generally in What Sort of IP Framework do we need after Brexit and what are we likely to get?   3 July 2016. In this article I consider how those changes will affect the British fashion industry which relies on EU trade marks and Community designs more than most. I have chosen this industry because I have conducted seminars on IP and fashion in London and Leeds (see  IP and Fashion Law   12 Sept 2015 London IP and Tech,  IP and Fashion Seminar - 7 Oct 2015   20 Sept 2015 and  Second Course on IP and the Fashion Industry   27 May 2016), ...

Jane Lambert Yesterday the Ministry of Justice increased fees for issuing proceedings to 5% of the value of the claim for claims over £10,000 with a cap of £10,000 for claims of £200,000 or over.  For some claims that it is a whopping 622% increase in fees.  The statutory instrument that effects those increases is  The Civil Proceedings and Family Proceedings Fees (Amendment) Order 2015 which is available only in draft on the legislation.gov.uk website. For entrepreneurs, designers and inventors this fees increase is very bad news because most IP infringement claims are for injunctions and unspecified damages. As I explained in Why "IP Yorkshire?"   10 Sept 2008    there is a correlation between patenting and the cost of enforcement. That is why this country consistently trails not only France and Germany in the number of European  patent applications but also the Netherlands with a third of our population and Switzerland with one ...

Jane Lambert The patent box is an important tax concession to encourage investment in research and development which came into effect on 1 April 2013. Over the last few months we have been running a patent box roadshow  with seminars at Leeds and Liverpool .  Our next seminar will be in London at the Liverpool embassy on 12 July 2013 and you can book for that event here . As we are one of the few chambers with expertise in tax as well as intellectual property we are concentrating all our resources on the patent box and research and development credits here.    Just one article and some links and presentations at the moment but it will grow.