NIPC News

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...

WIPO head office, Geneva Author Melatron Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert In my experience as a domain name dispute resolution panellist for the WIPO as well as a member of the Bar who has advised and settled pleadings for both complainants and respondents, most domain name disputes are straightforward. Moreover, most complaints are decided in favour of the complainant.  Of all the cases that have been referred to WIPO since 1999, some 21,399 or nearly 86.0% have resulted in a transfer to the complainant and 407 or 1.6% in a cancellation. A complaint has been denied in only 3,086 cases making 12.4% of the total (see  Case Outcome (Consolidated): All Years   on the WIPO website). Those figures are hardly surprising as it is rare for a complaint to be defended and even rarer for a response to disclose any merit. It can therefore be said with some confidence that most panellists' decisions are likel...

European Patent Office, Munich Photo Wikipedia Jane Lambert Many new businesses are started at this time of the year.  Unless it is a tech start-up little thought is likely to be given to intellectual property ( "IP" ) by entrepreneurs and small business owners when drawing up their business plans. That is a mistake because the competitive advantages earned from designing good looking new products, innovation or establishing a reputation for good service can be entrenched by law. It is a particularly British phenomenon fostered partly by lack of awareness of IP law by many business owners and their professional advisers and partly because IP rights were until recently very expensive to enforce. Their competitors in continental Europe, Asia and North America are much more likely to incorporate IP into their business planning. Develop an  IP Strategy First One of the reasons why British business owners and their advisers are wary of IP is tha...

Lord Esher: "better have his patent infringed .... than have a dispute about a patent." Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert 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." Clearly, there has to be a better way and indeed there is but you have to think and plan ahead. The key to keeping out of court is to anticipate and defuse potential disputes before they arise. The best way to do that is to commission regular intellectual property audits from your lawyers or patent or trade mark attorneys. An IP audit identifies the intellectual assets that you use in your business - that is to say, your brands, designs, technology and works of art and literature (which includes computer software and databases, catalogues and users' manuals a...