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 ,...

Omalizumab structure Authors  Manav Segal, Jeffrey R Stokes, Thomas B. Casale Licence CC BY 2,5 Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Patents Court (HH Judge Hacon)  Celltrion Inc v Genentech, Inc and another [2025] EWHC 174 (Pat) (30 Jan 2025)   This was an action by Celltrion Inc ("Celltrion") for the revocation of European patent (UK)  3 805 248 B1  for a "Process for concentration of antibodies and therapeutic products thereof" ("the patent") held by Genentech Inc ("Genentech") and Novartis AG ("Novartis") and a counterclaim by Genentech and Novartis against Celltrion and its UK subsidiary for infringement.  The action and counterclaim were tried by His Honour Judge Hacon between 24 Oct 2024 and 1 Nov 2024.  The learned judge delivered judgment on 30 Jan 2025 (see  Celltrion Inc v Genentech, Inc and another  [2025] EWHC 174 (Pat) (30 Jan 2025)).  By para [193] of his judgment, he found that the patent was valid and infringed. Th...

By Volker Prasuhn, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8363375   Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Tom Mitcheson KC) Bionome Technology Ltd v Clearwater [2024] EWHC 3155 (Ch) (9 Dec 2024) This was an appeal from the decision of the Deputy Director of Patents, Huw Jones, sitting on behalf of the Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks in an entitlement dispute.   As I said in How to Avoid Entitlement Disputes   on 22 June 2024 in NIPC Inventors' Club, an entitlement dispute is a dispute over the right to apply for or own a patent.   I wrote about such disputes in Disputes over Ownership of Inventions   on 6 Aug 2015 in NIPC South East. The Dispute In  Okipa Ltd and another v Bionome Technology Ltd   BL   O/0410/24 3 May 2024, Mr Jones held that British patent  GB2598881  and international patent application  WO2021/191614 A1 for controlling the growth of vegetation ("the invention")...

Author Judicial Office UK Licence CC BY-SA 4.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Zacaroli) Parsons v Convatec Lt d [2023] EWHC 1535 (Pat) (26 June 2023) This was an application by an employer to strike out or summarily dismiss part of its employee's claim for compensation under s.40 of the Patents Act 1977.  S.7 (2) of the Patents Act 1977 states that a patent for an invention may be granted primarily to the inventor except where a rule of law or contract entitles someone else to claim the invention.  One such exception is provided by s.39  which entitles employers to claim their employees' inventions in certain circumstances.  Most employees who are expected to invent something in the course of their employment enjoy generous salaries and benefits but there are some inventions that are so valuable to the employer that it is just to reward the employee with something extra.  S.40 makes provision for such re...

Lord Kitchin* Jane Lambert Supreme Court (Lords Hodge, Kitchin, Hamblen, Leggatt and Richards) Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks 2 March 2023 "DABUS" stands for "Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience". It was created by Dr Stephen L Thaler . who has trained it to invent  a food container  and  devices and enhanced devices and methods for attracting enhanced attention .  Dr Thaler has applied for patents for those inventions in several countries including the UK His applications have been rejected by the European, British and American and most of the world's other patent offices on the ground that an inventor must be a natural person.  The only country in which he has been successful is South Africa (see the South African Patent Journal July 2021 Vol 54 No 07 ). There is a list of Patents and Applications   for those inventions   on The Artificial Inventor Project website. In the United Kingdom, Dr T...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Nugee)  E Mishan & Sons, Inc (t/a Emson) v Hozelock Ltd and others [2019] EWHC 991 (Pat) (17 April 2019)   This was a claim for the infringement of two patents:   UK patent GB 2 490 276  for an expandable hose assembly and European patent EP 2 687 575  also for an expandable hose assembly. There was a counterclaim for the revocation of those patents on grounds of obviousness and, for a while, anticipation. This action and counterclaim came on before Mr Justice Nugee. The Invention The invention for which those patents were granted was a new type of garden hose. Conventional ones are made of plastic in a number of layers bonded together. They tended to be heavy. bulky and difficult to store.  They also tended to kink.  The invention avoided those difficulties. The inventor, Michael Berardi , made a hose consisting of two tubes, one inside the other.  The i...