NIPC News

Jane Lambert The State of Small Business: Putting UK entrepreneurs on the map   , which was compiled by Nesta (the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts)  in collaboration with The Sage Group  Plc , is a data-led guide to the state of small and medium enterprises ("SME") in the UK.  It is accompanied by a website called "The State of Small Business"   which provides detailed information about how such businesses are performing and changing in each area. The authors hope that decision-makers will take advantage of the data to understand their local business environments and thereby assist them to drive growth and productivity locally and nationally. The authors' recommendations to central government and other national policy makers are to:- Know that the productivity puzzle must be solved at a local level, Devolve capacity, not just powers,  Hold local authorities and devolved areas to account, Simplify busin...

Amsterdam Photo Massimo Catarinella Source Wikipedia Creative Commons Licence Jane Lambert In Paper 2 of the Brexit papers    Access to the EU legal services market The Bar Council Brexit Working Group reminded us that "the UK legal services market is a significant revenue generator for the Exchequer, worth £25.7 billion in total, employing approximately 370,000 people. Much of its work comes from overseas: "In 2015, of the 1,100 cases registered at the Commercial Court, more than two-thirds had one non-UK based party to proceedings." That would probably be true of the Patents Court where the world's leading pharmaceutical and consumer electronics companies settle their disputes and to a large extent the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court. Net exports of legal services generated an estimated £3.3 billion in 2015. Even though it is more expensive to litigate in common law countries than in most civil law jurisdictions businesses...

Jane Lambert As you can see from the above video the Intellectual Property Office has moved to the Government portal .  The new address of the site is  https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/intellectual-property-office although you can get through to the new site if you key in http://www,ipo.gov.uk . The new site is not as pretty as the old site and it takes a bit of getting used to but everything that I need seems to be there. I use the site for the unofficial consolidations of The Patents Act 1977 , The Registered Designs Act 1949 , The Trade Marks Act 1994  and Parts I and II of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988  and The Patents Rules 2007  and The Trade Marks Rules 2008  and they all seem to be there. Harder to find are the Tribunal Practice Notices which you need whenever you go before a hearing officer. These have been archived with the old website.  So, too, have the patents , trade marks and some of the designs decisi...