NIPC News

Manchester Civil Justice Centre Author Skip88 Licence Public Domain   Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Yesterday afternoon, I attended the Intellectual Property Crime Group  Knowledge Share, Introducing the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court Small Claims Track.  That was an online presentation given by Deputy District Judges Nicola Solomion and Richard Vary.  It consisted of 18 slides and lasted just over an hour.  Well over 140 people attended the call at one point.   I noted some familiar names in the Participants' list, including Barbara Cookson , Dids Macdonald  and Michael Edenborough . The presentation began with the observation that the court was now working well with good feedback.  The move to Manchester had been successful.   It had received additional resources which had enabled Deputy District Judge Vary to "rattle through his list."  Waiting times were now quite short.  Many cases were settled through...

Manchester Civil Justice Centre, Home of  the Small Claims Track Author Skip88   Public Domain   Source  Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Yesterday, HM Courts and Tribunal Service published a Guide to the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court Small Claims Track  and a glossary of  Common legal terms used in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court .   It aims to help users and potential users of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court ("IPEC") small claims track by giving practical tips.  Although it is primarily intended for litigants in person, intellectual property practitioners will also find it useful.  The guide is divided into the following sections: Introduction About the IPEC and the Small Claims Track How to decide if a claim is suitable for the IPEC Small Claims Trac k What to expect in your dealings with the court     What to do before issuing a claim     The procedure for claims in the IPEC Sma...

Intellectual Property Office, Newport Reproduced with kind permission of the Intellectual Property Office Jane Lambert   In  Protecting creativity, supporting innovation: IP enforcement 2020   which was published on 16 May 2020, the Intellectual Property Office promised to review periodically "existing methods of legal recourse for IP infringement to ensure they are effective, consistent, and proportionate."  On 5 Oct 2020, it announced a call for evidence from IP rights owners to inform that review.   The closing date for submissions is 11:45 on 2 Nov 2020. There are three key themes for the review;  the cost of legal challenges,  how accessible and effective the judicial process is, and  improvements to the Small Claims Track of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court.  There is also a discussion on whether to include registered designs disputes within the jurisdiction of the Small Claims Track. The Introduction  states that t...

Author Basher Eyre ,  Licence CC BY-SA 2.0 ,  Source Wikipedia Rolls Building Jane Lambert A new guide to the practice and procedure of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court ("IPEC")  was published yesterday and came into force immediately. It is intended to help users and potential users of the court by explaining how its procedures work and by providing guidelines where appropriate. Small Claims Track Business outside London An important announcement of the new guide is that from October 2019, there will be district judges in each of the six Business and Property Court centres outside London (Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle) to hear matters in the IPEC small claims track . Appeals from decisions in the IPEC small claims track will be filed at the relevant appeal centre indicated in PD 52B . A judge of the multi-track will be made available to hear the appeal, either locally or in London, dependin...

US Copyright Office Author Matt Wade Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Source Wikipedia US Copyright Office Jane Lambert Yesterday I received a phone call from an American lawyer who wanted to learn about the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court's Small Claims Track.  The reason she called is that she advises members of the US Congress who have introduced a bill "to establish an alternative dispute resolution program for copyright small claims, and for other purposes."  I answered her questions as well as I could and referred her to the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court's website , the IPEC and Small Claims Track guides  as well as my own writings on the subject.  I also directed her to Judge Hacon's clerk for further information. The ADR programme for copyright small claims proposed by the members of Congress is very different from IPEC's Small Claims Track.  It does not appear to be a co...

Much of the work that I did between 1980 and 2010 was to advise and act for small and medium enterprises from the North of England in claims for copyright, design right and trade mark infringement, breach of confidence and passing off. In many of those cases, a party sought an interim injunction and there was a fierce battle either on motions or Chancery interlocutory applications day or on the hearing of the motion or application for order. The parties usually lost interest in the case after the injunction was granted or refused. Rarely did a case go to trial and there was hardly ever an account or an inquiry. Sometimes money changed hands to settle a case but it rarely exceeded a few thousand pounds. Nowadays, most of those cases would fall within the jurisdiction of IPEC ("the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court"). IPEC was established on 1 Oct 2013 as a specialist list within the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice for intellectual property claims ...

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...

L'Academie de Coiffure French satirical print from the 18th century Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert I found rather more materials on IP and hair and beauty industry than I had expected when I started to read the trade literature.  Sabrina Tozzi and Rachel Boakes of Baker & McKenzie LLP have contributed  IP and the beauty industry: cosmetic concerns? to Issue 50 of  IP Pro Life Sciences (12 Aug 2015).  Elaine Eggington of IP Pragmatics Ltd, has posted an interesting presentation entitled  Innovation in the cosmetics industry   to her company's website. There are also articles about free wifi with its implications for copyright and data protection in a discussion on free wifi in the Legal Lifeline section of the National Hairdressers Federation website.There are links to the PRS for Music  and Phonographic Performance Limited websites on the Hair Council links page . All of this suggests a wider than avera...

Author Charles Levy Licensed by US government Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert I apologize in advance to those who will be offended by this post. I acknowledge that a photo of a mushroom cloud is pretty tasteless but it is sometimes necessary to shock in order to drive home a point. And my point is that an intellectual property right ( "IPR" ) is a title to bring a law suit which, like weapons of mass destruction ( "WMD" ), has potency only if and to the extent that it is ever likely to be used. The reason why doubt can arise as to whether an IPR will ever be used is that civil litigation is outrageously expensive.  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." Despite cost capping in what is now the Intel...

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...