NIPC News

Jan 2011 Jan 2013 Jan 2015 Jan 2017 Jan 2019 0 24K 48K 72K 96K Jane Lambert Something remarkable has happened to my NIPC Law blog.  Its readership has soared like a rocket. For the first time ever, it has received more than 100,000 hits in a single month. This is not entirely unexpected I have tried to publish a short post on something new every day whether a case note on a recent decision, an analysis of a new statute or some other important development.  Although I hope my articles will be useful to specialist lawyers and patent and trade mark attorneys I am aware that not every reader is an IP specialist.  Indeed, many are not lawyers at all. For non-specialists, I have posted information pages on copyright , patents , registered and unregistered  designs, trade marks and so on    These can be accessed from the home page  of the NIPC Law blog, clicking on the menu bar in the top left-hand corner (three short lines) and scrol...

Jane Lambert The blockade of Qatar by three of its partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council which I discussed in How will the Blockade of Qatar affect IP Law in the GCC Countries? 7 June NIPC Gulf reminds us that those countries have always been important to the United Kingdom. We sell a lot of goods am services to them and they supply us with oil and gas.  We have invested heavily in their economies and they have invested in ours. Those countries would have become even more important to us in that they would have been looking to us and other advanced countries to help them develop new industries and technologies for when the oil runs out and we would have been looking to do more business with them after Brexit. Because of the importance of this region to the UK, I started some years ago the NIPC Gulf blog  which follows legal developments in the region that are likely to affect this country and vice versa .  As I emphasize in the blog;s  About pa...

Jane Lambert I have just launched a new blog called NIPC Branding  which covers trade marks and branding for startups and other small businesses. This blog has grown out of my public access practice. On the About page I explain that "difficulties have arisen that could have been avoided, or opportunities missed that could have been exploited, had the persons involved been made aware of the issue in advance." The purpose of this blog is discuss those issues and the countermeasures that can be taken to avoid the difficulties and steps that can be taken to exploit the opportunities. I also set out the services that I offer and how I can be instructed if anyone wants further advice or assistance. The very first post addresses the question of whether an entrepreneur can apply for a trade mark by him or herself or whether he or she should instruct a trade mark attorney (see  Can I apply for a Trade Mark by myself or must I instruct an Attorney?   31 Ma...

Jane Lambert In November 2010, a few months after it had assumed office, the Coalition Government commissioned Prof. Ian Hargreaves  to review how the intellectual property framework supports growth and innovation. His terms of reference  expressly included "the cost and complexity to SMEs of accessing IP services to help them to protect and exploit IP". At para 9.2 of his report,  Digital Opportunity A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth , which   Hargreaves presented in May 2011, he identified "gaps in IP knowledge among SMEs and gaps in IP services available to them" which impaired the "ability of young and innovative UK firms to realise the potential value of IP".  That mattered, according to Hargreaves "because of the growing importance of smaller IP intensive firms to future growth."  Hargreaves found that the reason for those gaps was that current service provision was not configured as well as it could have been to ...