NIPC Law

  Jane Lambert Chancery Division (Mr Justice Rajah)   Illiquidx Ltd v Altana Wealth Ltd and others [2025] EWHC 299 (Ch) (13 Feb 2025) This was a claim for breach of contract and confidence and trade secrets and copyright infringement,    The Parties The claimant was Illiquidx Ltd, ("IX")  a company that describes itself as "an innovative independent financial services boutique specialised in illiquid markets, which caters to institutional, professional and high net worth investors."  Its activities focus on sales, trading and advice,  One of the markets in which it claims expertise is the sovereign debt of Venezuela , a country that has laboured under international sanctions for many years and has recently defaulted on its debt. The first and second defendants are Altana Wealth Ltd ("Altana") and Lee Robinson ("Mr Robinson") Altana's founder, controlling shareholder and chief investment officer. According to its website, Altana seeks uni...

Photo Michael Maggs   Licence CC BY-SA 3.0   Jane Lambert I ntellectual Property Enterprise Court (Recorder Amanda Michaels)  Pliteq Inc and another v iKoustic Ltd and anothe r [2020] EWHC 2564 (IPEC) (2 Ocr 2020) This was a dispute between Pliteq Inc , a manufacturer of acoustic damping and sound control products and its UK subsidiary and iKoustic Ltd  ("iKoustiic"), their former distributor When the two sides fell out iKoustic held a large quantity of Pliteq stock which the claimants refused to take back. iKoustic used Pliteq's marks to sell off that stock while at the same time selling their own range of competing products,  Pliteq complained that the use of their marks in relation to iKoustic products amounted to trade mark infringement and passing off,  The defendants denied that their use of the claimants' marks amounted to infringement but if it did they could rely on the exhaustion defence set out in s.12 (1) of the Trade Marks Act 1994 and art 15 (...

Jane Lambert In anticipation of our departure from the European Union. Her Majesty's government and businesses in the United Kingdom have been exploring the possibility of developing new markets for British goods and services overseas. Only this week, the Prime Minister visited Saudi Arabia and Jordan (see  Prime Minister's visit to Saudi Arabia and Jordan: April 2017   4 April 2017 HMG's website) and the Chancellor of the Exchequer was in India as part of the 9th UK-India Economic and Financial Dialogue (see  UK-India economic and trade relations to take centre stage on two-day visit   4 April 2017 HMG's website). One of the advantages of trading within the EU is that the legal systems of the member states have been harmonized over the years and supplemented with a growing body of Union law. This is as true of intellectual property  as of everything else with the result that the legal protection of intellectual assets  in any of the...

I mentioned Eli Lilly's claim against Canada for compensation under art 1110  of the North American Free Trade Agreement ( "NAFTA" ) in  Bilateral Investment Treaties: Claiming Compensation from Foreign Governments under Bilateral Investment Treaties for failing to provide adequate IP Protection   27 July 2013 and  Bilateral Investment Treaties: Eli Lilly and Co. v Government of Canada   2 Jan 2014 as well as my article  " Bilateral Investment Treaties: A Remedy for SME? " which was published in Issue 12 of Volume 35 of the European Intellectual Property Review on page 759. Following Eli Lilly's Notice of Arbitration   which I mentioned in January the parties appointed Professor Albert Jan van den Berg , Mr Gary Born and  Sir Daniel Bethlehem KCMG, QC  as arbitrators. Eli Lilly designated its Notice of Arbitration as its statement of claim by a letter from its lawyers dated 14 May 2014.  The arbitrators have made ...

Although some such as George Monbiot do not approve of it (see "This transatlantic trade deal is a full-frontal assault on democracy" 4 Nov 2013 The Guardian ) and many quite politically aware people are not even aware of it, negotiators from the United States and European Union have been hammering out a deal to create a North Atlantic Free Trade Area. If they succeed they will create a market of 800 million of the richest consumers on earth which should increase the GDP of all the countries in the arrangement enormously. An early discussion draft can be inspected here  and news of the latest negotiations can be gleaned from the press conference above. One of the reasons why Mr Monbiot does not like the deal is that disputes between businesses and governments will be determined not by the Court of Justice of the European Union or a national court but by arbitration as happens already under Chapter II of the North American Free Trade Agreement and a large number of bil...