NIPC Law

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...

Chartreuse Author Jarv Licence Free Art Licence  Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Patents subsist for 20 years, copyrights for the life of the author plus 70 years but the obligation neither to disclose nor make use of business or technical information that is disclosed in confidence can last indefinitely.  The recipe for Chartreuse is a case in point.  That distinctive liqueur has been emulated and occasionally counterfeited but never replicated. All members of the World Trade Organization are obliged to protect undisclosed information from unauthorized use and disclosure by art 39 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ("TRIPS") but different countries including different EU member states discharge that obligation in different ways. Such differences affect the functioning of the internal market.  To minimize those differences the European Council adopted the trade secrets directive (Dir...

Jane Lambert In  Implementing the Unitary Patent in the UK   22 Feb 2016 I discussed the consultation on the implementation of the Unified Patent Court Agreement  in the legal systems of the United Kingdom. The consultation document, which was entitled  Technical Review and Call for Evidence on Secondary Legislation Implementing the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court and EU Regulations Establishing the Unitary Patent , contained a draft statutory instrument upon which the public's views were canvassed. I discussed the responses to that consultation and the government's reply. The government has now published a draft statutory instrument known as  The Patents (European Patent with Unitary Effect and Unified Patent Court) Order 2016  which will come into effect on the date of entry into force of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court. The Draft Order The draft order consists of three articles: Art 1  concerns citation, the ent...

In 1962 Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni designed a floor lamp with a marble base and a curved lead to a bowl shaped reflector.  Those lamps, known as the Arco lamp and you can see a picture of one of those lamps in Achille Castiglioni's studio in Quick History: The Arco Lamp   in  Apartment Therapy. Original Arco lamps retail for £1,373 but it is possible to buy a reproduction for a fraction of that price as the Prime Minister's wife did recently (see "Samantha Cameron counts the cost of her repro lamp"   3 Oct 2011 The Guardian ) .   The reason why it is possible to buy a reproduction lamp is that s.52 (2) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ( "the CDPA" )  provides that after the end of the period of 25 years from the end of the calendar year in which articles made from an original artistic work in which copyright subsists with the licence of the copyright owner are first marketed, that work may be copied by making articles of any ...

As I said in How the Intellectual Property Act 2014 changes British Patent Law   21 June 2014 JD Supra, the most important provision of the Intellectual Property Act 2014  is s.17  which inserts a new s.88A into the Patents Act 1977. That section confers power on the Secretary of State to make provision in the UK for the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court . Why is that agreement important? It is because art 1 establishes a court common to almost all the countries of the European Union including the UK for the settlement of disputes relating to European patents and European patents with unitary effect ("Unitary patents").  That court will be known as the Unified Patent Court ("UPC") and it will consist of a Court of First Instance and a Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal will sit in Luxembourg but the Court of First Instance will have a central division with Paris with sections in London and Munich. In addition there will be regional and local divisi...

S.13 of the Patents Act 2004 inserted two new sections into the Patents Act 1977 . S.74A provides as follows: " 74 A Opinions as to validity or infringement (1) The proprietor of a patent or any other person may request the comptroller to issue an opinion— (a) as to whether a particular act constitutes, or (if done) would constitute, an infringement of the patent; (b) as to whether, or to what extent, the invention in question is not patentable because the condition in section 1(1)(a) or (b) above is not satisfied. (2) Subsection (1) above applies even if the patent has expired or has been surrendered. (3) The comptroller shall issue an opinion if requested to do so under subsection (1) above, but shall not do so— (a) in such circumstances as may be prescribed, or (b) if for any reason he considers it inappropriate in all the circumstances to do so. (4) An opinion under this section shall not be binding for any purposes. (5) An opinion under this section shall be prepared by ...

On 31 July 2009, a working group consisting of the three Patents Court judges, His Honour Judge Fysh QC and representatives of the patent bar, CIPA, ITMA and various other interest groups published a report on Proposals for Reform of the Patents County Court . For those who are not familiar with the English legal system, there are two tiers of civil courts of first instance in England and Wales: the High Court of Justice with unlimited jurisdiction throughout England and Wales; and a network of local courts with jurisdiction limited by geography and subject matter known as "the county courts." S.287 (1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 enabled the Lord Chancellor to designate any county court as a "patents county court" and to confer on it jurisdiction to hear and determined proceedings relating to patents and designs. There has only ever been one patents county court at any one time, Two courts have been designated and both of those have been in Lo...