NIPC News

St Salvator's College, St Andrews © 2018 Jane Elizabeth Lambert:  All rights reserved:   Jane Lambert It is often forgotten that law was once taught at St Andrews though not always in the town itself. St Andrews lost its law school in 1967 when Queen's College in Dundee became a separate university. Many St Andreans continued to make their way to the law after 1967 but they obtained their legal education elsewhere. In 2015. an Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research was established at St Andrews.  According to its website, it is "the home of outstanding cross-disciplinary research in the fields of law, legal history and constitutionalism."  The Institute's website also states that the University is home to a vibrant student law society .  I visited that society's website and noticed that its  partners included several leading law firms but no English or Welsh chambers or Scottish stables.  Curious as to why that should be, I contacted the soci...

Jane Lambert If your business has been forced to close if your staff are furloughed. if you are a furloughed employee or even if you have lost your job one as a result of this ****ing virus, one of the few positive things you can do during this lockdown is to train.  And if you are thinking of launching new products, starting a new business or looking for a new job one of the most useful things you can learn is intellectual property . Starting next Tuesday at 14:00 London time, I shall give an introductory talk on English and Welsh patent law which, in keeping with academic tradition, I shall call Patents 101.  This talk will last about 90 minutes and is aimed primarily at entrepreneurs, business owners and managers but should also be useful for solicitors and barristers who specialize in fields other than intellectual property and perhaps even associates and trainees who are about to work in their firms' IP departments. The talk will cover the following topi...

Author : Willh26 Licence   Creative Commons  Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert A recent decision of the Court of Appeal to enforce a non-disclosure agreement ("NDA") by means of an interim injunction has led to a promise by the Prime Minister to review the law relating to such agreements (see Court stops Telegraph publishing 'sexual harassment' story   24 Oct 2018 BBC website). While NDAs,  like any legal instrument can be abused, they are a very useful business tool.   They enable inventors to discuss their inventions with potential collaborators and investors before they are ready to apply for patents.  They prevent the disclosure or use of sensitive commercial information that may have taken years to gather.  They allow business relations to continue between parties to potentially damaging disputes. Earlier this year the trade secrecy laws of the 28 member states of the Euro...

Jane Lambert Whenever I get a lot of enquiries on the same topic from a particular location I offer a talk on the subject.  I have recently had a lot of enquiries from Liverpool and the North West on "When is it OK to reuse other people's photos or other content?" The issue can arise in many ways. Sometimes a copyright owner complains that copies of his photos appear on someone else's website without his permission and he wants to know what he can do about it. Other times, I find myself counselling a business owner who has received a bruising letter before claim demanding eye-watering sums of money by way of compensation and legal costs and far-reaching undertakings. Before the launch of the small claims track of the small claims track of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in 2012, the question was often academic because the costs of copyright infringement litigation greatly exceeded the damages that were likely to be awarded. What has made it a live...