NIPC Law

Intellectual Property Office Author IPO Crown Copyright Licence:    Jane Lambert For many years the Chief Executive of the Intellectual Property Office ("IPO") who is also known as "the Comptroller" for patent and unregistered design right matters and "the Registrar" for trade marks and registered designs, has referred disputes that have been brought before him or her to officials known as "hearing officers".  Until 19 April 2000, those hearing officers conducted their proceedings very differently from the courts. There was nothing that resembled statements of case in civil litigation and evidence was filed in statutory declarations. As a result, many of those proceedings were slower and more expensive than they should have been. A great change occurred on 26 April 2000 when Tribunal Practice Notice (TPN 1/2000)  came into force. It addressed the following matters: "The Office and parties should endeavour to com...

The Intellectual Property Office Crown Copyright Reproduced with kind permission of the IPO Jane Lambert On 16 Dec 2015 the President of the European Parliament and the President of the European Council signed  Directive (EU) 2015/2436 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2015 to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks (Text with EEA relevance) OJ L 336, 23.12.2015, p. 1–26 ("the directive").  Art 55 of the directive repeals  Directive 2008/95/EC  with effect from 15 Jan 2019 while art 54 requires member states including the UK to transpose arts 3 to 6, 8 to 14, 16, 17 and 18, 22 to 39, 41 and 43 to 50 into their laws by 14 January 2019. The legislation that implements art 54 in the United Kingdom is a statutory instrument, namely The Trade Marks Regulations 2018 (SI 2018 No 825 ). These regulations were made on 9 July 2018 and come into force on 14 Jan 2019. There are 54 of them arrange...