NIPC Law

ICANN Head Office in Los Angeles Photo  Coolcaesar Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence Source  Wikipedia Jane Lambert A domain name is a mnemonic for an internet address, that is to say a long string of numbers that identifies a website, mailbox or other resource. Since they are used to identify businesses, government departments, international agencies, universities and other institutions they can be very valuable assets.  They can be registered for one or more years for a few pounds, euro or dollars without extensive checks or formalities on a first come first served basis. Those who apply to register domain names have to warrant and represent to their domain name registrar that they are entitled to register those names in their registration agreements.  They are also required to agree to refer any complaint by a trade mark or other intellectual property right owner that they are not so entitled to a form of altern...

Mark Twain 1835-1910 Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert "James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration." (Mark Twain) The last time I wrote about the Unified Patent Court and unitary patent  I was pessimistic on whether the United Kingdom could remain a party to the Unified Patent Court Agreement  after 29 May 2019 and also  on whether that agreement could survive the UK's departure (see What, if anything, can be salvaged from the UPC Agreement?   26 Jan 2018). On balance I am still pessimistic but I have not yet given up hope on either score. There are four reasons for not giving up hope completely all of which have arisen since my last article:- The Privy Council made  The Unified Patent Court (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2018  SI 1988 No 184 on 8 Feb 2018 which clears t...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert As I noted yesterday in Comptroller visits the EPO   27 March 2018 NIPC News, British companies and inventors applied for 5 313 European patents last year according to the European Patent Office's  Annual Report 2017   which was a 2.4% increase over the 5,188 of the previous year and the 4th straight year of increase.  This is with with an increase in PCT applications from the UK from 5,502 in 2016 to an estimated 5,567 in 2017 (see  PCT international applications by origin   on the WIPO website). There has also been a 9.3% increase in international trade mark applications through the Madrid system (see  Madrid international applications by origin ) and a small increase in design applications under the Hague agreement to which the UK has recently acceded (see  Hague international applications by origin ). It is probably too early to speculate on the reasons for this increase in filing activi...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert Accelerators are a way of helping new businesses to establish themselves.  They are short programmes that last between 4 and 12 months in which groups of entrepreneurs known as "cohorts" refine their business plans and are given the skills, knowledge and connections they need to succeed.  NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) published a research paper and directory of accelerators and incubators last year which I discussed in  Business Incubators and Accelerators Directory   20 April 2017 NIPC News. On 22 April 2017 I discussed the  Accelerators and Incubators in the Leeds City Region   in IP Yorkshire and on the 24 I considered those in Sheffield in  Accelerators and Incubators in the Sheffield City Region .   I also mentioned a new fintech accelerator in Dubai in   FinTech in Dubai    3 Aug 2017 in NIPC Gulf. Since a lot of inventors fail...

Jane Lambert These are the slides for a talk that I gave last week on the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council  of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC) ("the GDPR") . Why the GDPR is important The regulation will come into force simultaneously in all 28 member states of the European Union including the United Kingdom on the 25 May 2018. It will repeal the Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EU) which was transposed into English and Welsh as well as Scottish and Northern Irish law by the Data Protection Act 1998 .  Although the GDPR will eventually cease to be part of our law either when we leave the EU on 29 March 2019 or at the end of any transition or implementation period that may come into effect immediately after our exit, its p...

The Rolls Building Author  Basher Eyre  Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Patents Court (HH Judge Hacon):  Cantel Medical (UK) Ltd and another v ARC Medical Design Ltd   [2018] EWHC 345 (Pat) This was a claim by Cantel Medical (UK) Ltd and Cantel (UK) Limited  for the revocation or declarations of non-infringement of the following patents , registered Community designs ("RCD") and unregistered design rights : European patent number 2 575 590 for a covering for a medical scoping device ; UK patent number 2 478 081 for a covering for medical scoping device ; RCD number 001856121-0001 ; RCD number 002523191-0001 ; the design right in the design on an attachment to a colonoscope known as the Endocuff; and the design right in the design of another attachment known as the Endocuff Vision. ARC Medical Design Ltd ., which is the registered...

Author Mikelo  Licence  Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic Source:  Wikimedia Commons This month's Brexit briefing focuses on the publication by the European Commission of a draft agreement for the withdrawal of the UK from the EU and the Euratom. Although it has not yet been presented to the British government and there has already been some grumbling from the PM and others it is unlikely to be rejected out of hand. There were some welcome signs of pragmatism in the PM's speech at the Mansion House on 2 March 2018. There were also some crumbs of comfort for the ratification of the UPC Agreement and perhaps even continued British participation in the Court after Brexit. Read more

Inventors, entrepreneurs and others setting up in business can obtain free digital training online or from a Google Digital Garage in Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield. Yesterday I visited the Google Digital Garage in Manchester and wrote about it in    Visit to Manchester's Google Digital Garage 6 March 2018 IP North West. Yesterday was also the death of the well-known inventor, Trevor Baylis CBE . Commiserations to his family, friends and connections.

Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Arnold):  Generics (UK) Ltd (t/a Mylan) and another v Yeda Research And Development Company Ltd [2017] EWHC 2629 (Pat) (26 Oct 2017) On Wednesday, 28 Feb 2018 I gave a talk to the C5 Pharma and Patent Litigation Conference   at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Amsterdam. Mine was one of three talks on the topic Infringement under the Doctrine of Equivalents.  I discussed the law of England in the light of the Supreme Court's decision in Eli Lilly v Actavis UK Ltd and others  [2017] UKSC 48, [2017] Bus LR 1731 while  Paul Reeskamp  and Philipp Cepl , who practise in the Netherlands and Germany, considered the topic in the light of the developing case law in their jurisdictions. I had previously written about the Supreme Court's judgment in  The Supreme Court's Judgment in Eli Lilly v Actavis UK Ltd and Others: how to understand it and why it is important   13 July 2017. Possibly because Lord Ne...