NIPC Law

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...

The Intellectual Property Bill has passed through the Commons and now awaits royal assent. Although much attention has focused on clause 13 of the Bill which will create a new offence of unauthorized copying of a registered or registered Community design in the course of business the legislation makes a number of useful changes to registered and unregistered designs and patents law. I have written a number of articles on the Bill for this blog: "The Intellectual Property Bill" 26 May 2013 "Correspondence with my MP on Clause 13 of the Intellectual Property Bill"  29 May 2013, and "Clause 13 of the Intellectual Property Bill will probably go through. What next?"  20 Dec 2013. I also made written submissions on the Bill as it passed through committee in the House of Commons. My colleague, Thomas Dillon, has also analysed the Bill though he has tended to welcome clause 13 (see Thomas Dillon "UK: Intellectual Property Bill"  28...

On 1 Jan 2008, the EC (including the UK notwithstanding our wonderful PM's prior engagement at the Kirkcaldy Sea Otters' early morning Hogmanay swim around the Bass Rock or indeed to do just about anything to avoid showing enthusiasm for the EU ) accedes to the Hague Agreement . This agreement is a bit like the Madrid Protocol and the Patent Co-operation Treaty in that it facilitates multiple applications for design registration from a single filing. EC accession to Hague will not be anything like as far-reaching as its accession to Madrid since the only sizable countries outside Europe that are party to the agreement are Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, Singapore and Turkey, but accession does present a protection option to British design owners that did not previously exist. Even though HMG is not acceding to Hague in its own right, EC accession necessitates amendments to our law. S.11ZA (1) A) of the Registered Design Act 1949 will change from: "The registration of a design...