NIPC Law

Jane Lambert A rather more interesting Brexit Briefing this month  because the UK has ratified the Unified Patent Court Agreement.  The article sets out the background to ratification and considers whether it will make a difference.  Also discussed are the proposals to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland and indications that HMG will accept the backstop arrangements for birder checks between Great Britain and both parts of the island of Ireland set out in the draft withdrawal agreement notwithstanding political and constitutional challenges to which that could lead. Finally, there is the agenda for discussions on the future partnership between the UK and EU after Brexit which would include services and some encouraging remarks about the city of London from Monsieur Barnier at the Eurofi High Level Seminar in Sofia on 26 April 2018. More

Jane Lambert The European IPR Helpdesk , an EU-funded collaboration between Infeurope SA , Eurice GmbH  and  L'Institut de la Propriété Intellectuelle Luxembourg  to provide free, first-line advice and information on intellectual property, has recently published two fact sheets on IP and trade fairs. The first, which is entitled  Intellectual property management at trade fairs ,  is addressed to exhibitors at, and visitors to, trade fairs while the second,  IP considerations for trade fair organisers , is addressed to organizers. Both fact sheets were developed in co-operation with the European Major Exhibition Centres Associaton  and the European Exhibition Industry Alliance, Intellectual property management at trade fairs starts with "Things you should know before participating in a trade fair." These include "Knowing the IPRs you own", "Registration is the easiest and most effective way to fight against infring...

An early form of FinTech Photo HB Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert A lot of money is going into FinTech (financial services technology) in this country and overseas nowadays including accelerator programmes promoted by our central bank and one of our major clearers (see the Bank of England's FinTech page  and the Barclays Accelerator  as well as details of the other accelerator programmes in the table below). But how is all that investment in FinTech to be protected if indeed it is to be protected at all?  In an extract from a longer article in Gluon.  Steve Findley and Vanni Torelli ask whether IP is so important to FinTech (see  Fintech Startups – is IP important?   The FinTech Times). In view of the amounts of money involved, I should be very surprised if it were not. Findley and Torelli argued that of the top 35 FinTec h  unicorns  than 25% have filed for patents. I am not in the least surprised by that statistic....