NIPC Law

Intellectual Property Office Crown Copyright Reproduced courtesy of the IPO Jane Lambert Building the Evidence Base on the Performance of the UK Patent System   is a report written by the Economics, Research, and Evidence team of the Intellectual Property Office. It was published on 23 Aug 2017. The title of the report appears to refer to the first recommendation of Prof. Hargreaves's review of Intellectual property and growth (see Digital Opportunity   May 2011): "Evidence . Government should ensure that development of the IP System is driven as far as possible by objective evidence. Policy should balance measurable economic objectives against social goals and potential benefits for rights holders against impacts on consumers and other interests. These concerns will be of particular importance in assessing future claims to extend rights or in determining desirable limits to rights." It consists of 76 pages including covers and is divided into...

Jane Lambert On Wednesday I stressed the importance of pre-action correspondence and how the drafting of a letter before claim can make all the difference between getting what you want quickly and cheaply through focused negotiation and precipitating an expensive and possibly protracted law suit in  Pre-Action Correspondence - Not Just a Box to be ticked or a Hoop to be jumped through   2 Aug 2017. Today, I shall tell you what to do if you receive a letter accusing you of infringing a patent or some other intellectual property right. If you have carried out an IP audit you should have a strategy in place for just such a contingency and you will have an insurance funded legal team ready to advise and represent you.  If you have a case they should be able to see off the challenge with a well-reasoned and documented response. If, however, you are in the wrong they will advise you of that reality and suggest ways of extricating yourself from the dispute as ...

Leeds Law Courts (c) 2005 Jane Lambert: all rights reserved Jane Lambert Until the Civil Procedure Rules ( "CPR" ) came into force in 1999 solicitors specializing in intellectual property law heralded litigation with an ultimatum called a letter before action . Written in haughty if not insulting terms and accompanied by a humiliating form of undertakings, they were intended to shock the recipient into submission. They rarely achieved the desired result. As often as not they were simply ignored.  Occasionally, they were answered by a defiant response.  As a result, a lot of actions were launched that could easily have been settled without recourse to litigation. As I wrote in Dispute Resolution   all that was supposed to change with the introduction of Pre-Action Protocols and the Practice Direction-Pre-Action Conduct and Protocols : "The objective of the Practice Direction and the Pre-Action Protocols is to enable the parties to identify the ...