NIPC News

On Thursday, 12 September 2013, the Royal Television Society's  Cambridge Conference  heard  Nancy Tellem , Microsoft's Entertainment & Digital Media President, explain the thinking behind the  Microsoft Xbox One  console, due for release on 22 November 2013. Xbox One is a "state of the art gaming console, a new generation TV and movie system, and a whole lot more". Gaming, internet browsing, Skype telephony and watching films and television all take place through a single set-top box. Users can rapidly switch between uses or enjoy them simultaneously, using vocal or gestural controls.  When I asked Nancy Tellem, who started her career as an attorney, where she expected Xbox One to be regulated, and whether as television or video game or both, she engagingly confessed that she "would have to get back to me".  As the European Commission observed in its April 2013  Green Paper  on convergence in audiovisual services, we are experienci...

Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert One of our most distinguished members is Professor Louis Harms . Professor Harms was until recently the Deputy President of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa which is the highest court of that country for all but constitutional matters. He is a distinguished intellectual property lawyer and holds professorships at several universities. His career is summarized in "A Singular Colleague",   an article that appeared in the December 2011 edition of the Advocate published by the South African Bar Council. Having retired from the South African Supreme Court, Professor Harms practises as an arbitrator and he heads a panel of specialist intellectual property arbitrators and mediators from these chambers which I shall discuss in a future article.  He will be in chambers on the 25 Sept and has kindly offered to give a special lecture entitled "The principle of self-interest rightly understood' to an invite...

Jane Lambert On 15 Aug 2013 Robert Griffiths QC , Samuel Okoronkwo , our senior clerk Stephen Broom  and I met  Vera Helena de Moraes Dantas  and David Benoliel of Noronha Abogados . Noronha Abogados is a Brazilian law firm with offices in seven major cities in Brazil and a further eight in the rest of the world including one in London .  Vera is the resident partner of the London office and she is also an English solicitor. I met Vera when she gave a talk on doing business in Brazil at a conference on business in the Americas organized by the North West branch of UK Trade and Investment  at Haydock Park over 10 years ago. Whenever I  have had a client who has required advice on Brazilian law I have sent him off to Vera. Vera in turn provided me with some information on Brazilian law for my presentation on "The Coming Economic Downturn: How it will affect inventors and what they can do"  15 Oct 2008. The reason why we invit...

Gray's Inn Square Source Wikipedia Building on our Introduction to IP  seminar on the 26 June 2013 we are holding workshops on: Branding Law  - that is to say trade marks, passing off, geographical indications, domain names on 25 Sept 2013; Creative Output - that is to say copyrights, rights in performances, moral rights and related rights on 30 Oct 2013; and Technology Law - patents, trade secrets, unregistered designs rights (including semiconductor topographies) and plant varieties on 27 Nov 2013. Each of these workshops will last 90 minutes plus breaks on the last Wednesday of each month between 16:00 and 18:00.   If you attend, you will qualify for CPD points from the SRA or BSB.   These talks will lay a foundation for more advanced workshops on the substantive law, licensing and litigation.   Best of all they will provide an opportunity to meet out new IP, technology and media law team who will attend as many of the talks a...

Robert Griffiths QC A lot of IP law relates to sport. Trade marks, association rights, broadcasting copyrights, patents for sports equipment - you name it  There is some IP in it somewhere. Our chambers have always been strong in sport and one of our stars is Robert Griffiths QC . Not only is he a sports lawyer, he is also a sportsman with a particularly strong interest in cricket.  Imagine my delight yesterday morning when he called me to say that he realized that he was actually an intellectual property lawyer as well as everything else and offered to lead our IP, Technology and Media Law Group.   I shall be adding his details to our blog shortly, Other new team members with a strong interest in sport include Samuel Okoronkwo  who knows all there is to know about football  as he is an FA licensed lawyer and agents as well as barrister and Ruhi Sethi  who is a long distance runner. Ruhi is a great addition to the team because she ...

On 3 July 2013 the Irish Supreme Court gave its  judgment  in the appeal by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner ("DPC") in  EMI Records (Ireland) Limited & ors v The Data Protection Commissioner  [2013] IESC 34. Although this represents an endorsement of the voluntary graduated response scheme agreed between ISP Eircom and the record labels, the decision was based essentially on technical grounds. It offers an interesting example, however, of the attitude of an authority charged with enforcing data protection laws. As described in an earlier  post , EMI and other record labels had sued Eircom for participating in the infringement of copyright by its Internet access subscribers. The case was settled by a contractual GR scheme, under which an infringing user would on his third notification be suspended from Internet access for one week; after a fourth notification, Eircom would terminate his access agreement. The user was free to find another ISP if he...

Our head of chambers (who recently received the accolade of Lawyer of the Week   from the Times) and our other silks and specialist practitioners will hold our annual Judicial Review Conference  at the offices of the Law Society between 10:00 and 16:00 on the 4 July 2013. There is a public law dimension to intellectual property. In  Lenzing AG's European Patent (UK) [1997] RPC 245 where Mr Justice Jacobs sat as an additional judge of the Queen's Bench Division upon an application for a review of the implementation in England of a decision of the European Patent Office.  More recently, Mr Justice Kenneth Parker determined an application for a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act 2010 on the grounds of incompatibility with EU legislation in British Telecommunications Plc and another (R on the application of) v The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills [2011] EWHC 1021 (Admin) (20 April 2011). There is a very strong lineup of speakers and an ...