NIPC News

Black Hole Author Alain R Source Wikipedia Creative Commons Licence Jane Lambert In  Right to be forgotten: a Transatlantic Dialogue   1 Aug 2015 NIPC Law I discussed the judgment in C‑131/12 Google Spain SL and Another v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) ex parte Costeja 36 BHRC 589, [2014] 3 CMLR 50, [2014] EMLR 27, EU:C:2014:317, ECLI:EU:C:2014:317, [2014] All ER (EC) 717, [2014] 3 WLR 659, [2014] ECDR 16, [2014] 2 All ER (Comm) 301, [2014] EUECJ C-131/12, [2014] 1 QB 1022, [2014] QB 1022 and Google's response to it. Yesterday I wrote about Judge Behrens's decision in  Dawson-Damer and Others v Taylor Wessing LLP and Others [2015] EWHC 2366 (Ch) (6 Aug 2015) in  Wilmslow versus the Bahamas: Dawson-Damer and Others v Taylor Wessing and Others   13 Aug 2015. Although Dawson-Damer was not a right to be forgotten case, it casts some light on how rights arising under the 1998 Act would be enforced. What is the...

Jane Lambert On 2 July 2015 the Intellectual Property Office held a conference on IP insurance for business at the offices of the Association of British Insurers in Gresham Street . As I have written a lot of articles about IP insurance over the last 10 years I attended the conference with my colleague Ruhi Sethi.  Many of the great and the good in intellectual property were there including Mr Justice Arnold , the senior patents judge and  Andrea Brewster , president of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. Although the title of the conference was IP Insurance for Business its subject matter was very much wider, As you can see from the slides, only David Bloom of Safeguard IP and Dids Macdonld of ACID actually discussed IP insurance. I found Macdonld's speech particularly interesting in that she gave some details of an insurance scheme for ACID members which she had set up with Sybaris Legal and IP . That's the sort of deal I should like to negoti...

Jane Lambert Mediation can best be described as "chaired" or "facilitated" negotiation. It works because negotiations proceed through an intermediary known as "a mediator" who is often privy to information that neither party would disclose to the other. To show how mediation works I have uploaded two case histories: one on the resolution of a computer supply dispute  and the other a trade mark opposition  (see also  Mediating Disputes from the Trade Marks Registry   1 Sept 2005 NIPC Law). Both the courts and the Intellectual Property Office ( "IPO" ) hearing officers expect parties to consider mediation or some other form of alternative dispute resolution before issuing proceedings. Both have power to penalize parties who fail to do so by, for example, disallowing costs that they would normally have awarded to the successful party or awarding more costs than they would otherwise have ordered the unsuccessful party to pay. Th...

Upon seeing the above presentation one of my Yorkshire clients sent me the following rant: "Hello Jane, I have just finished watching your Enforcing IPR talk. Very impressive. The UK law is so dysfunctional and financially prohibitive — serving only the financial elite. I have to say, having listened to it, it reinforces what I have been saying to you for some time ... Why bother with IPR? I mean, why bother with protecting IPR if it is just not within financial reach to defend it? ADR could be the beneficiary of such prohibitive costs, but not really. For example, if one entity is more financially endowed than the other it actually is a strategy to threaten the other side with the court system, if only because they know it will bankrupt the other side. The courts no longer represent fairness, or right over wrong. The UK law is so dysfunctional and financially prohibitive — serving only the financial elite. I feel quite depressed to be honest! Kind regards" There...

Jane Lambert Yesterday the Ministry of Justice increased fees for issuing proceedings to 5% of the value of the claim for claims over £10,000 with a cap of £10,000 for claims of £200,000 or over.  For some claims that it is a whopping 622% increase in fees.  The statutory instrument that effects those increases is  The Civil Proceedings and Family Proceedings Fees (Amendment) Order 2015 which is available only in draft on the legislation.gov.uk website. For entrepreneurs, designers and inventors this fees increase is very bad news because most IP infringement claims are for injunctions and unspecified damages. As I explained in Why "IP Yorkshire?"   10 Sept 2008    there is a correlation between patenting and the cost of enforcement. That is why this country consistently trails not only France and Germany in the number of European  patent applications but also the Netherlands with a third of our population and Switzerland with one ...

Last month I uploaded my slides for my presentation to the IALCI seminar on enforcing intellectual property rights in England and Wales . Here is a show reel of the highlights of the seminar.

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...