NIPC News

Jane Lambert Our IP system, which is ranked by TaylorWessing as one of the best in the world (see The Global Intellectual Property Index ) consists of some rights that subsist under national law and others that subsist under EU law. When we eventually leave the EU, those rights that subsist under EU law such as the EU trade mark and the Community design will fall away. I discussed those consequences generally in What Sort of IP Framework do we need after Brexit and what are we likely to get?   3 July 2016. In this article I consider how those changes will affect the British fashion industry which relies on EU trade marks and Community designs more than most. I have chosen this industry because I have conducted seminars on IP and fashion in London and Leeds (see  IP and Fashion Law   12 Sept 2015 London IP and Tech,  IP and Fashion Seminar - 7 Oct 2015   20 Sept 2015 and  Second Course on IP and the Fashion Industry   27 May 2016), ...

National Galleries of Scotland Author Finlay McWalter Source Wikpedia Creative Commons Licence Jane Lambert On 15 April 2016 I was invited to speak to t he Scottish meeting of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh on Preparing for the Unitary Patent and the UPC. I was one of four speakers. The others were: Catriona M Hammer  who spoke on Portfolio Strategy for Start-Ups, Spin-Outs and Other Small Businesses ; David Bloom of Safeguard IP who spoke on Intellectual Property Insurance Solutions ; and  Eleanor Wade of the Intellectual Property Office whose talk was entitled Updates form IPO. Over 50 patent attorneys and other IP professionals attended the meeting which was chaired by Andrea Brewster. I enjoyed all the presentations but I found Catriona's particularly interesting as I specialize in advising and representing start-ups and other SME. She has spent most of her career i...

Jane Lambert In  Basic Facts About Trademarks: What Every Small Business Should Know Now, Not Later , one of the best video introductions to trade mark law I know in any country, the presenter Mark Trademan (yes that really does appear to be his surname) of the US Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Information Unit  asked an audience of entrepreneurs and small business owners how many of them had a business plan. A forest of hands shot up. "How many of you with business plans have a trade mark component?" asked Mr Trademan. Silence. "OK, I was afraid of that." The response would have been no different had Mr Trademan given his presentation here even though our own Intellectual Property Office warn in  Before you apply for a patent   on the British government website that "it’s pointless patenting an invention unless you have a proper plan for making money from it and can defend it against copying." Everybody knows that a business...

Embedded pursuant to the standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert The Intellectual Property Office has recently uploaded a series of videos to its YouTube channel  which are very short but also very useful. The primer is IP Basics: What is Intellectual Property   and it is followed by films on copyrights. designs , patents and trade marks . Although they have been uploaded for some time they do not seem to have been watched by many people which is a pity because they are a lot better than the advice one can expect from most invention promotion companies or even some lawyers and, of course, they are free. The above video on  IP BASICS: Is Intellectual Property important to my business?   has received only 970 views since the 27 Nov 2015 and a large number of those will have have been made by me. I hope this article may attract more viewers for these films. Good though the IPO animations are there are some that have been produced by other organizations that I l...

Jane Lambert Most IP disputes arise out of conflicts between competitors and competition is what businesses do. In fact, businesses are compelled to compete by law. Disputes will therefore happen unless precautions are taken to avoid them. The risk of disputes can never be eliminated entirely because folk miscalculate and act emotionally but if a dispute cannot be avoided it can at least be managed. How Disputes arise and what can be done to prevent them Disputes arise because of uncertainty as to the existence, extent or nature of an IPR or because one party believes that the other lacks the means or will to enforce its rights or defend its interests. In order to minimize the first risk businesses should ensure that they have obtained appropriate legal protection for their most revenue generating intellectual assets. To minimize the second risk they should ensure that they had sufficient funding through insurance or otherwise to enforce their rights or defend the...

Jane Lambert Earlier this year I discussed mediation as a method of resolving IP disputes (see IP Mediation 22 May 2015). Mediation is a form of alternative dispute resolution ( "ADR" ) , that is to say resolving a disputes without going to court.  ADR offers a number of advantages which the World Intellectual Property Organization ( "WIPO" ) listed in ADR Advantages . As I noted in my previous article "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" in every case. In that article I described mediation as "chaired" or "facilitated" negotiation. Like all forms of negotiation it works through consent. However. there are some disputes that can never be resolved in this way.  They require an  adjudication , that is to say a decision based on a finding of fact and law....

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...