NIPC Law

Nucleus of 103P/Hartley as imaged during a spacecraft flyby Author NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD  Licence Public Domain  Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Patents Court (Michael Tappin KC)  Thaler v The Comptroller -General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2025] EWHC 2202 (Ch) (1 Sept 2025) DABUS stands for "Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience".  According to its creator, Stephen Thaler , DABUS invented a new kind of food or beverage container and a new kind of light beacon and a new way of attracting attention in an emergency. Dr Thaler has tried to obtain patents for DABUS's inventions but he has not had much success outside South Africa. That is because most of the world's intellectual property offices , including our own, require an inventor to be a natural person.  I have written a lot of articles about DABUS and Dr Thaler's patent applications.  Readers are referred to Artificial Intelligence -The DABUS Decisions ,...

Vape Cloud Chasing Author VAPES   Licence CC BY-2.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Chancery Division (Mr Justice Miles)  Bargain Busting Ltd v Shenzhen SKE Technology Co Ltd and others [2025] EWHC 1239 (Ch) (21 May 2025) Updated 16 May 2026 This was an application by Shenzhen SKE Technology Co Ltd (Shenzhen) to restrain Bargain Busting Ltd ("BB") from threatening trade mark infringement proceedings against Shenzhen's distributors and retailers.  BB is the registered proprietor of UK trade marks  UK00003235344  and  UK00003534551 , which Shenzhen has challenged on the grounds of non-use and invalidity.  BB has also applied to register CRYSTAL BAR  as a trade mark under trade mark number UK00003786148 .  Shenzhen responded to BB's threats by seeking an order under s .21C  to prevent BB from making further threats of proceedings against Shenzhen's distributors and retailers.  It also sought information o...

We have all given a warm welcome to the small intellectual property claims track but, as I warned in "The New Small IP Claims Jurisdiction" on 5 March 2012, there are likely to be a lot of claims against little people in the new tribunal.  I mentioned claims by photo libraries in my article but there may well be a torrent  (apologies for the pun) of claims against file sharers too. An indication that could happen is  Golden Eye (International) Ltd and Others v Telefonica UK Ltd [2012] EWHC 723 (Ch) (26 March 2012). Importance of the Case This was a claim by Golden Eye (International) Ltd. and 13 other claimants against O2   (the trading name of Telefonica UK Ltd) for Norwich Pharmacal orders. These are orders requiring a person who is not himself a wrongdoer but who has documents or information identifying wrongdoers to make that information available to an injured party.   The jurisdiction takes its name from the appeal in  Norwich Pharmacal...

"So what is intellectual property ?" That is a question that I have been asked many times. By accountants and bank managers, clerks of factory chambers, instructing solicitors and even by fellow members of the Bar. Well now the Court of Appeal has provided an answer of sorts.   In  Coogan v News Group Newspapers Ltd and Another [2012] EWCA Civ 48 (1 Feb 2012) the question was whether mobile telephone voice mail messages were "intellectual property" for the purpose of s.72 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 and the Court of Appeal held that they were. The question arose in the context of the privilege against self-incrimination. Unlike the United States which safeguards this privilege by the Fifth Amendment of its Constitution, it subsists at common law (see Blunt v Park Lane Hotel Ltd [1942] 2 KB 253) and is reinforced by s.14 of the Civil Evidence Act 1968. But there are loads of exceptions to this rule as the Master of the Rolls noted at paragraph [16] of his ...

A super injunction is one in which an anonymized applicant is granted an injunction restraining an anonymized respondent from doing specified but unpublishable things and further restraining the respondent and others from publishing the fact that the injunction had been sought and obtained. In Ntuli v Donald [2010] EWCA Civ 1276 (16 Nov 2010) the appellant Adakini Ntuli sought to overturn an order by Mr. Justice Eady restraining her from publishing, using or disclosing scheduled categories of confidential information, the existence of the proceedings or the identity of the parties. The information itself concerned details of the Ntuli's personal relationship with Howard Donald of "Take That". After their relationship came to an end, Ntuli sent Donald the following text: "Why shud I continue 2 suffer financially 4 the sake of loyalty when selling my story will sort my life out?" She then engaged the publicist Max Clifford whereupon Donald applied to Mr. Justi...

This article was written by my sister in law and tenant, Lois Cole-Wilson , and was first published on the IP/IT Update website on w8 May 2008 under the title  Legal Aid, Human Rights, Libel and McDonald: Steel and Morris v UK.   Lois had some insight into this case because she was the pupil to one of the counsel in the orginal hearing.   For further information please contact Lois through our Contact page. The European Court of Human Rights ( "ECHR" ) has handed down judgment in the case between the Greenpeace campaigners Helen Steel and David Morris and the United Kingdom ( The case of Steel and Morris v UK   (Application no. 68416/0 1 . (2005) 41 EHRR 22, [2005] ECHR 103).   This was the conclusion to a case which has the accolade of being the longest running case in English legal history. It has lasted nine years and six months, with a trial lasting two years and six months and an appeal lasting twenty three days. The Libel Case The litigants often referred to as the McL...