NIPC News

Author US Government Licence Public domain Source     Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Since I discussed the Intellectual Property Office's consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence  in  UK Government Launches Consultation on AI and Copyright   on 16 Dec 2024, HM Government has published its  AI Opportunities Action Plan , the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change its Rebooting Copyright: How the UK Can Be a  Global Leader in the Arts and AI   white paper and the World Artificial Intelligence Film Festival  is about to open in Nice. Until recently, attention has focused on the negatives of AI.  The late Stephen Hawking warned that it could end human existence (see Rory Cellan-Jones, Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind   2 Dec 2014).  Others worried that it could reinforce inequalities between sections of society or bolster repression. In his foreword to the Tony Blair Institute white pape...

Diagram of the Turing test Author Juan Alberto Sánchez Margallo Licence CC BY 2.5   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Following the Court of Appeal's judgment in Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks v Emotional Perception AI Ltd [2024] EWCA Civ 825. [2024] Bus LR 1589, [2024] WLR(D) 339 on 19 July 2024 which I discussed in Patents - the Appeal in Comptroller v Emotional Perceptions   on 26 Aug 2024, the UK Intellectual Property Office has published new  Guidelines for examining patent applications relating to artificial intelligence (AI)  and  Scenarios applying the guidelines for examining patent applications for AI . The Guidelines state that AI inventions as computer-implemented inventions. They explain that AI inventions rely on mathematical methods and computer programs in some way. The law excludes from patent protection inventions relating solely to a mathematical method or a program for a computer but when a...

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  "...

Copyright 2023 WIPO  Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert The WIPO's World Intellectual Property Indicators 2023   and the statistic that caught my eye is that India filed 31.6% more patent applications in 2022 than in the previous year. According to the accompanying press release, it extended an 11-year run of growth unmatched by any other country among the top 10 filers. India overtook the UK in the list of countries that filed the most patent applications in 2022.   There was a 1.7% growth in the worldwide number of patent applications in 2022 (3,457,400 in 2022 compared to 3,400,500 in 2021.  Some 1.58 million (or nearly half) of those patent applications came from China.  The USA came second with 505,539 applications, Japan third with 405,361, South Korea fourth with 272,315 and Germany fifth with 155,896.  The UK lay eighth with 53,536 between India with 55,718 and Switzerland with 49,077.   There was, however, a sharp...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert On the day that my article   Patents - Interdigital Technology Corporation and others v Lenovo Group Ltd. and others   appeared in which I discussed Mr Justice Mellor's 225-page judgment in Interdigital Technology Corporation and others v Lenovo Group Ltd. and others   [2023] EWHC 539 (Pat ),  the Intellectual Property Office ("IPO") announced a questionnaire on standard essential patents ("SEPs") for SME small-cap and mid-cap businesses. This follows an earlier consultation on SEP licensing that the IPO launched on 7 Dec 2021.  I discussed it in  IPO Consultation on SEPs and Innovation   on 19 Dec 2021.  The IPO received 56 responses to that consultation.  The names of the respondents appear in Annex A  to a Summary of Responses to the Call for Views .  Their responses are analysed in that document.  Bearing in mind the costs of FRAND litigation and that it seems to involve only mass...

Author Utilisateur:Ork.c h Licence CC BY-SA 2.0FR   Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert The World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO")  operates the Patent Cooperation Treaty ("PCT") , Hague Agreement  and the Madrid Protocol .  These are international agreements that facilitate applications for patent, design or trade mark registrations in multiple countries and territories from a single filing. Those agreements simplify and greatly reduce the costs of obtaining international legal protection for technology, designs and brands. On 28 Feb 2023, the WIPO published its statistics for patent , design and trade mark registrations in 2022.  There had been a 0.3% increase in international patent applications from 277,182 in 2021 to 278,100 despite the pandemic, conflict in Ukraine, fluctuating energy prices and other adverse economic conditions.  There was a much sharper increase in design registration applications from 6,714 in 2021 to 7,973 in 20...

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...

Summer School Attendees  © 2017 Gita Mistry: All rights reserved   Jane Lambert For the first time in three years, there will be an IP Law Summer School in Cambridge in Summer . There was an IP law Summer School in 2020 but it took place entirely online.  There were presentations on IP law in Cambridge last year given by the usual speakers but they took place in December . We had a dinner and pub quiz but not much else.  We also had to give the last few talks online to comply with public health regulations.   If you want to know what happens at the Cambridge IP Law Summer School, look at my write-ups for 2017 and 2019 .  The event is attended by some of the leading practitioners in this country and abroad.  For instance, on Tuesday 16 Aug 2022 I will introduce Sean Leach from Mathys & Squire, Hiroshi Sheraton from Baker & McKenzie, Andrew Payne from TaylorWessing, Matthew Shade of Wilmer Hale, Andrew White of Mathys & Squire, Timothy...

Jane Lambert On 28 April 2022, the European Patent Office and the European Investment Office published a joint report entitled  Deep tech innovation in smart connected technologies A comparative analysis of SMEs in Europe and the United States April 2022 .  Although the report contained a lot of positive findings, the headline of the EPO's news item was decidedly gloomy: "Despite impressive patent activity, Europe’s small deep tech businesses lag behind their US counterparts." Part of the reason for the gloom is that report focused on the EU rather than Europe as a whole. Consequently, it missed the fact that the UK has almost 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises developing 4IR technologies (nearly twice as many as Germany with 570 and nearly two and a half times as many as France with 400) and that London hosts one of the top clusters of such businesses (see page 30 and the map on page 29 of the main report). It would have been interesting to know the reasons for t...

Jane Lambert The World Intellectual Property Organization its World Intellectual Property Indicators Report for 2020 on 7 Dec 2020. For the first time since the 2998 world economic downturn, there had been a 3% drop in patenting activity since 2018 but a sustained increase in the number of applications for trade marks, designs and plant breeders' rights.  The reason for the reduction in the number of patent applications from 3.3 million in 2018 to 3,2 million in 2019 is that the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) received 9.2% fewer applications in 2019 than it did in the previous year and the Japan Patent Office ("JPO") 1.8% fewer.  The CNIPA still received 1.2 million patent applications which was more than any other office. The US Patent and Trademark Office came second with 621,453, the JPO third with 307,969, the Korea Intellectual Property Office fourth with 218,975 and the European Patent Office fifth with 181,479.  Intellectual property ...

Author Basher Eyre Licence CC BY-SA 2.0  Source Wikipedia, Rolls Buildin g Jane Lambert Congratulations to Richard Meade QC on his appointment to the High Court bench (see the Judicial Appointments Commission press releas e of 4 Sept 2020).  He will take up his appointment on Monday.   As I said in  Appointments to the Court of Appeal   2 Aug 2020, Sir Colin Birss's elevation to the Court of Appeal gad left a vacancy in the Patents Court. It will now be filled by Richard Meade. Interestingly. the JAC press release stated that more High Court judge announcements will be made as the year progresses. In yesterday's communication to members of the IP Bar Association, Daniel Alexander QC congratulated Richard Meade and Sir Colin Birss but also reminded us of other appointments.  The Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Vos, will be the new Master of the Rolls.   Simon Clark, Philip Harris and Brian Whitehead have been appointed to hear ...

Jane Lambert There has not been much IP training lately either for business owners and the general public or for lawyers, patent or trade mark attorneys or other IP professionals.  That could be a problem because as I said in IP Services during the Emergency   23 March 2020 NIPC Inventors Club and many times since IP has never been more important than it is now. On 21 April 2020, I tried to do something about it by delivering over the internet a talk on patents that I had given some years ago to an audience of solicitors and patent and trade mark attorneys at the offices of Morgan Cole (now Blake Morgan ) in Oxford.  This was part of a double act that I performed with the distinguished solicitor and author Peter Groves .   The training started at 14:00 and lasted till 17:00.   My contribution was an introduction to patent law and overview that lasted 90 minutes. The feedback that we received suggested that the talk had gone down v...

Jane Lambert I hope all my readers had a good Christmas and I wish them a happy and prosperous New Year, A hot topic for the New Year is likely to be the legal protection of inventions, artistic and literary works, designs and other intellectual assets that are created by machines.  Three of the papers of the Life Science IP Conference which was held at at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel on 26 and 27 Nov 2019 addressed the topic as did two of the papers at the International Copyright Law Conference  which was held in London a few days later.  Francis Gurry , the Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (the UN specialist agency for IP) discussed the subject in an interview entitled Intellectual property in a data-driven world   which appeared in the October issue of the WIPO Magazine. This is not a new subject.  I can remember articles and conference papers on the topic for as long as I have been at the Bar.  ...

Jane Lambert Earlier this year the World Intellectual Property Organization  published WIPO IP Facts and Figures 2018 .  This is a compendium   of statistics on worldwide patent, design and trade mark filings.  The headline figures are that there were 3.17 million patent applications around the world in 2017, as well as 1.78 million utility model applications, 12.39 million trade mark applications and 1.24 million applications for the registration of industrial designs.  The lion's share of those application cams from Asia with 97.1% of the world's utility model, 67.9% of its industrial design, 66.6% of its trade mark and 65.1% of its patent filings.  North America came second in patenting with 20.3% and Europe third with 11.2% but Europe was ahead of North America in trade mark, industrial design and utility model registrations.  Some 85.1% of the world's 3.17 million patent applications were filed with the world's top five ...

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 ...

Jane Lambert According to the Intellectual Property Office's latest  Facts and Figures , there were 382 applications for UK patents from Wales in 2017. That was more than the 158 from Northern Ireland and 296 Northeast England but considerably less than the 2,585 applications from London and the 2,067 from the Southeast. Developments that may make a difference are the opening of the Menai Science Park (M-SParc)    in Angelsey on 1 March 2018 and the construction of the Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus .  Like the Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre in Bangor, these are initiatives of two of Wales's research universities to stimulate innovations and economic growth in their local areas. There are signs that those initiatives are working.  I attended "Pitch Perfect" at M-SParc on 1 March 2019 and wrote about the event in A Good Way to spend St David's Day   (2 March 2019).  There were some very good proposals indeed and I thin...