NIPC Law

     Hague Union State, Party to 1960 Hague Act    Hague Union State, Parties to 1999 Geneva left;"    covered by Regional Economic Integration Organization (REIO), not separate member    Hague Union State, also covered by REIO Author L.tak   Licence CC BY-SA 4.0   Source Wikimedia Jane Lambert The Hague Agreement facilitates legal protection of industrial designs in multiple jurisdictions from a single application much in the way that the  Patent Cooperation Treaty  does for inventions and  Madrid  for brands.  It was concluded in 1925 but it had very few  members  until recently.  It first began to affect businesses in the United Kingdom in 2008 when the European Union joined the system.  The United Kingdom acceded in its own right on 13 June 2018.  Other countries that have joined since 2008 include Canada, Israel, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and the USA. There are now 76 ...

Jane Lambert   Patents Court (Mr Justice Marcus Smith) Thaler v The Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2020] EWHC 2412 (Pat) (21 Sept 2020) DABUS was described by its owner, Dr Stephen Thaler, "as a type of 'Creativity Machine'".  I have mentioned it before in Artificial Intelligence - The DABUS Inventions   19 Feb 2020 and Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property   27 Dec 2019 NIPC News.  Dr Thaler claims that his machine has invented a Food Container  and Devices and methods for obtaining advanced attention .  Applications for patents for those inventions have been filed in the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Patent Office.  All three applications have been rejected on the grounds that an inventor must be a human being under the laws of the United Kingdom and the United States and the European Patent Convention. In Britain, Dr Thaler appealed to the Comptroller and his appeal was heard by Mr Huw...

Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Recorder Campbell QC)  Shenzhen Carku Technology Co Ltd v The Noco Company [2020] EWHC 2104 (Pat) (24 July 2020) Last year, Prof Frederick Mostert and I were commissioned by the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") to report on IP enforcement measures especially anti-piracy measures in the digital environment. We presented our Study  to the Advisory Committee on Enforcement on 3 Sept 2020 and you can see our presentation as well as the rest of the day's proceedings on the recordings of the morning  and afternoon sessions. One of our findings is that rights holders are moving away from the courts to the application of voluntary measures by intermediaries. There are many reasons for that.  The cost of litigation is continuing to rise, particularly in common law countries.  Wrongdoers can keep a low profile when dealing over the internet making it difficult to identify and serve them.  It is ...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert The World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") , European Patent Office ("EPO")  and the Intellectual Property Office ("IPO")  have all published statistics on patenting activity in 2019.  According to the IPO's Facts and figures: Patent, trade mark, design and hearing data: 2019 , the IPO received 19,250 patent applications in 2019 which was down from 20,931 the previous year.  Just over 12,000 of those applications came from the UK compared to 12,843 the previous year.  However, there was a welcome 6.9% increase in the number of applications for European patents (6,156 in 2029 compared to 5,761 in 2018 (see European patent applications ).  There was also modest growth in the number of international patent applications from the UK (5,786 in 2019 compared to 5,634 the year before (see  Annex 1: International patent applications by origin (PCT System) )). The modest increase in the number of internatio...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert When I was a graduate student at UCLA in the early 1970s I wanted to consult a book. I learned that it was not in our library but that it might be at Berkeley.   I filled out a simple form which someone typed into a keyboard,  Not long afterwards I received a reply.  At the time I was not very impressed because the same result could have been achieved by telex or even telegram. Since then I have learned about DARPA  and discovered that some of the early work on what is now the internet was carried out at UCLA at about the time I was there.  It has occurred to me that I may have sent one of the world's first emails. About 15 years later I was definitely sending and receiving emails because I had subscribed to Telecom Gold . I had installed a dedicated telephone line to my chambers at 72 Bridge Street in Manchester and bought a dial-up modem which I connected to my Amstrad 8256  computer.  The modem was very...

Author Dominik Hundhammer Licence CC BY-SA 3.0 Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert In Geographical Indications   I quoted the WIPO definition  of a geographical indication ("GI") as  "a sign used on products that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are due to that origin".   I also stated that the UK has an international obligation to protect such signs under art 22 (2)  of the TRIPS Agreement which is annexed to the WTO Agreement as Annex 1C. In Geographical Indications after Brexit   6 Oct 2018 NIPC Branding I noted that this country had discharged that obligation through EU legislation and that the UK will need to establish its own GI regime in order to comply with art 22 (2) TRIPS whether it leaves the EU with or without a withdrawal agreement.  On 5 Fev 2019 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ("DEFRA") published Protecting food and drink names if there's no Brexit dea...

WIPO Author Jane Lambert} © 2004 All rights reserved Jane Lambert On 13 March 2018 the British government deposited with the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") an instrument of ratification  o f the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs  ("the Hague Agreement").  The deposit of that instrument enabled the UK to join the Hague system for the registration of industrial designs from 13 June 2018.  The Hague system allows businesses to register up to 100 designs in 69 countries in a single application. The Hague system is not entirely new to British business as the European Union has been party to the Hague Agreement since 1 Jan 2008.  The EU's participation in the Hague system works well for businesses that want to protect their designs throughout the whole EU as well as other parties to the Hague Agreement but Community design registra...

Jane Lambert Today is World Intellectual Property Day . It commemorates the day on which the day in 1970 on which the  Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization  ("WIPO") came into force. Since the day has been marked by events around the world to promote awareness of intellectual property . Most of those events follow a common theme.  This year's theme is  Powering change: Women in innovation and creativity .  The WIPO website explains: "Every day women come up with game-changing inventions and life-enhancing creations that transform lives and advance human understanding from astrophysics to nanotechnology and from medicine to artificial intelligence and robotics. And in the creative sphere, whether in the movies, animation, music, fashion, design, sculpture, dance, literature, art and more, women are re-imagining culture, testing the limits of artistry and creative expression, drawing us into new worlds of experie...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert On Easter day the Intellectual Property Office tweeted The modern #Easter egg owes its development to Van Houten’s invention of a press for separating cocoa butter from the cocoa bean in 1828. pic.twitter.com/PwcaaxMG4O — IPO.GOV.UK (@The_IPO) April 1, 2018 Chocolate came from the New World and its properties were discovered by the indigenous peoples of the American continent. It is a good example of what we would nowadays call "traditional knowledge." According to the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO")  traditional knowledge is a living body of knowledge passed on from generation to generation within a community which often forms part of a people’s cultural and spiritual identity. Its traditional knowledge and intellectual property background brief  explains: "The current international system for protecting intellectual property was fashioned during the age of industrialization in the West...

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...

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...