NIPC Law

Jane Lambert   Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, Intellectual Property (Sir Colin Birss, Chancellor) QMC Instruments Ltd v Celtic Terahertz Technology Ltd and others [2025] EWHC 3485 (IPEC) (26 Nov 2025) This was a dispute between two university spin-off companies, which were incorporated to exploit the work of Professor Peter Ade .  Professor Ade carried out research into the far-infrared spectrum first at  Queen Mary College (now Queen Mary University London)  until 2001 and afterwards at Cardiff University . While at Queen Mary, he helped to set up QMC Instruments Ltd.  ("QMCIL") to sell far-infrared detectors and multimesh filters, some of which he had designed.  Some years later, Professor Ade and colleagues who had followed him to Cardiff established Celtic Terahertz Technology Ltd  ("CTT"). QMCIL Queen Mary College sold QMCILto investors in 1991 and warranted that the company was the sole beneficial owner of all the IP relatin...

Author John Speed    Source Wikimedia  Commons   Jane Lambert Patents Count  (Daniel Alexander KC)  Oxford University Innovation Ltd v Oxford Nanoimaging Ltd   [2023] EWHC 138 (Pat) (25 Jan 2023) On 23 Dec 2022, Mr Daniel Alexander KC delivered a remarkable judgment in Oxford University Innovation Ltd v Oxford Nanoimaging Ltd [2022] EWHC 3200 which I discussed in  Patents: Oxford University Innovation Ltd v Oxford Nanoimaging Ltd   on 23 Jan 2023 and in  Student Inventors and their Universities - Ownership of IP in Inventions resulting from Students' Research   on 26 Jan 2023. Mr Alexander upheld a claim for royalties by Oxford University Innovation Ltd ("OUI") the technology transfer arm of Oxford University against Oxford Nanoimaging Ltd ("ONI").  The royalties were for a licence to work patents for inventions that had been invented by one of the University's research students while he had been working at Oxford as an in...

Author Kamyar Ali   Licence CC BY 2.0   Source Wikimedia Commons South Park, Oxford   Jane Lambert Patents Count (Daniel Alexander KC)  Oxford University Innovation Ltd v Oxford Nanoimaging Ltd [2022] EWHC 3200 (Pat) (23 Dec 2022) This was an action by Oxford University Innovations Ltd , ("OUI") to recover the royalties due under a licence agreement that it had entered with Oxford Nanoimaging Ltd . ("ONI") on 26 April 2016.  OUI is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oxford University.  Mr Daniel Alexander KC, who tried the action as a deputy judge of the High Court, described OUI as "the technology transfer arm of the University".  OUI owns the patents and other intellectual property rights relating to a compact, super-resolution imaging device known as the "Nanoimager". The device was largely invented by one Bo Jing  initially while he was employed as an intern and later while he was a DPhil student at the University. Mr Jing is now a director and ...

Sir Richard Lambert Author FT Licence CC BY 2.0   Source Wikipedia Richard Lambert J ane Lambert Much of the research into COVID-19  is being undertaken by universities in collaboration with biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Collaboration between businesses and universities has been particularly successful in the USA where it has resulted in Silicon Valley and the Boston to Cambridge life sciences cluster.  There have been similar developments in other countries, notably China, Israel and South Korea. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer. Gordon Brown understood the importance of collaboration between businesses and universities. In 2002 he arranged for the Treasury, Department for Education and Skills and Department for Trade and Industry to commission Richard Lambert to report on business and university collaboration (see HM Treasury press release " Government welcomes Business - University Collaboration Review" 4 Dec 2003). Lambert...

Here is the email that I sent to my MP at 22:23 last night: "Dear Jason, You will shortly be required to consider the  Intellectual Property Bill  which was introduced into the House of Lords by Lord Younger, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Intellectual Property on 10 May 2013. I have analysed the Bill in detail and written a detailed commentary entitled  "The Intellectual Property Bill"  28 May 2013 which I hope you may find useful. The Bill contains a lot of useful provisions and is generally to be welcomed but it contains one provision, clause 13, which would create a new offence of infringing a registered design punishable by 10 years imprisonment, an unlimited fine or both.  During the consultation on the proposed provisions of the Bill, Sir Robin Jacob a former Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal and now a leading academic lawyer who is regarded by most as the greatest authority on IP law of the age, objected strenuously to the propo...