NIPC News

Jane Lambert IALCI stands for  The international association of lawyers for the creative industries . It was founded in March 2013, during Paris fashion week to provide useful and up-to-date business and legal know-how and solutions to the creative industries.  Its main goal is to enhance the collective knowledge of the creative industries, by organising seminars, webinars and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS), talks, google hangouts, podcasts, TV programmes about, and by publishing articles, newsletters, blogs and books on, business and legal topics of critical importance to the creative industries and entertainment sector. One of those seminars took place on Tuesday, 10 Feb 2015 on the law of luxury goods series: intellectual property – how to protect, manage and monetize the know-how and intangible capital of luxury and fashion brands . Alexander Rozycki  and I spoke at that seminar.  My presentation, which appears above, was one of three talks...

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...

Jane Lambert While an employee remains on your payroll he or she is bound by an implied obligation of good faith and fidelity to do his or her best for you. He or she is not allowed to discuss your affairs in public or work for a competitor. As Mr Justice Laddie said in Ocular Sciences Ltd v Aspect Vision Care Ltd (No.2)  [1997] RPC 289, [1996] EWHC Patents 1, (1997) 20(3) IPD 20022, that has nothing to do with the law of confidence or trade secrecy. However, the employee is not your slave. He or she is entitled to seek work elsewhere or even set himself or herself up in business in competition with you. If the employee leaves your employment he or she is likely to use skills, knowledge and experience gained in your employment. There is nothing wrong with that even if you have spent time and money training the employee. After all, you see nothing wring in recruiting someone who has been trained by somebody else do you. Nor is it disloyal of the employee to atten...

In an email to the Intellectual Property Bar Association , our Chair Henry Carr QC reported that he and a party of other IP lawyers and patent attorneys visited 1000 Dockland Road, Royal Albert Dock, London E16 2QU last month. The reason for their visit is that the site has been identified as a possible venue for the London section of the central division of the Court of First Instance of the Unified Patent Court. The estate agents' particulars sound idyllic: "Fully accessible raised floor Suspended ceiling with 1.5m planning grid Cat 5 lighting Excellent natural light Views over Royal Albert Dock Four pipe fan coil air conditioning 7 underground car parking spaces and bicycle storage 3 passenger lifts Five-storey winter garden and building reception On site coffee shop, cafeteria and news agents."! Henry's note is also pretty encouraging: "1. The facility is, potentially, very good for a European Institution. The space is l...

WIPO Head Office Photo Wikipedia Jane Lambert Last Wednesday I attended the annual domain name panellists' meeting at the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") 's head office in Geneva. The meeting normally takes place on the third Monday of October but this year it was postponed until December. The WIPO is one of five domain name dispute resolution service providers that have been approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN")  for the resolution of disputes between trade mark owners and those who have registered domain names. The other service providers are the Arab Centre for Dispute Resolution , the  Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre , the Czech Arbitration Court Arbitration Centre for Internet Disputes  and the National Arbitration Forum . By a memorandum of understanding between the US Department of Commerce and ICANN dated 25 Nov 1998 the US government entrust...

Jane Lambert When I practised on my own account from the Media Centre in Huddersfield my strapline was "Bringing high quality advice and advocacy to those who need them most but can often afford them least."  Although I now have to charge more because I have much higher costs I try to do the same in London. It is now more necessary than ever because the Legal Services Consumer Panel wrote at page 5 of their report 2020 Legal Services How regulators should prepare for the future   November 2014: "The core challenge ahead is to extend access to justice to those currently excluded from the market because they cannot afford legal services. This need and other forces, including government policy, consumer empowerment, technology and the effects of liberalisation, will combine to result in less involvement by lawyers in many of the tasks that until now have made up their staple diet. Consumers will seek alternatives to lawyers or use them in differen...

Jane Lambert If there is one thing that the IPO is good at it is writing reports which is just as well as it was ranked 12th in 2012 in the the list of top 15 patent offices by number of patent applications which was the last year that the World Intellectual Property Office ("WIPO") published that particular league table (see page 17 of WIPO IP Facts and Figures 2012 ). No doubt it will slip still further after unitary patents become available because why would anyone want a monopoly of an invention for a small, crowded, offshore island which came within an ace of fragmentation last September when they can get a European patent for nearly the whole of the EU as though it were a single state? S.21 (1) of the Intellectual Property Act 2014 requires the Secretary of State before the end of the period of 6 months beginning with the end of each financial year to: "lay before Parliament a report setting out— (a) the Secretary of State’s opinion of the exten...