NIPC Law

I am giving an introductory talk on Intellectual Property to the Barnsley Digital Media Centre pictured above at 10:30 tomorrow. Call in if you happen to be in the area. It is free and the Jane Townsend of the Centre promises us some very nice cakes with our morning coffee. Also with me will be my friend Professor Ron Jones of Horizon Ceramics who is doing great things at the Advanced Manufacturing Centre at Catcliffe near Sheffield. Barnsley is a surprising place. A short walk from the Centre is Pollyanna which is really droolworthy (I think I've just invented a word - let's see if the Oxford Dictionary picks it up in 20 years time). Pollyana also has a very pleasant cafe. If the seminar goes well we shall try to set up a regular Barnsley IP Clinic like the ones we run in Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield. So look forward to seeing you tomorrow. As you can see from the photo above, there is always plenty of parking.

I have just finished ploughing my way through the latest white paper on innovation "Innovation Nation" which appeared in March and I really wish I hadn't. White papers, reports, reviews and policy statements on innovation from this government rival Zimbabwe dollar bank notes in their profusion and value. We have had HM Treasury Science and Innovation Strategy 2001 , the DTI Innovation Report 2003 , Lambert , Gowers in 2006 to mention just a few. All gathering dust as will this one. The one report which actually gave HMG some sensible advice is the IPAC Report "The Enforcement of Patent Rights" (November 2003) which now appears only on Mandy Haberman's website. That report together with Mandy's and Roland Hill's minority report Patent Enforcement for SME and Lone Inventors - A System Failure and several others made the point that the cost of IPR enforcement in the UK is many times greater than what it is in the rest of Europe. The cost of a typ...

Dennis Crouch has just published a very interesting case note on Ford Global Technologies v. ITC (Fed. Cir. 2008). This is an appeal from a decision of the International Trade Commission upon an application by the Ford Motor Company to bar the importation into the USA motor vehicle spare parts from Taiwan. There is no system of design registration in the USA. Nor is there any kind of unregistered design protection except, curiously, boat hulls pursuant to Title V of the Digital Millennium, Copyright Act. Designs are protected in the USA by a special type of patent known as a "design patent ". Dennis's article suggests that the right conferred by a design patent has very little use in the motor vehicle after market except where there has been slavish copying and there are all sorts of problems over novelty. It is the opposite of the way we used to protect component designs with copyright (see British Leyland Motor Corp and others v Armstrong Patents Company Ltd and othe...

Despite 300 years of political union and until recently a common legislature there remain striking differences between the laws of Scotland and those of the rest of the UK. Occasionally these come to light. A case that highlights them dramatically came before M Wise QC sitting as a temporary (presumably deputy) judge on Friday. This was the sort of case that still comes before chancery interim applications judges from time to time and before Universal Thermosensors Ltd v Hibben [1992] 1 WLR 840 was commonplace. A high tech company engaged in dimensional control and laser scanning services to the oil and gas industries suspected that one of its former directors had made off with some of its trade secrets. It took steps to recover them. Had the case happened in England the employer might have applied for a search order under CPR Part 25 . In Scotland the equivalent procedure appears to be to petition for the appointment of a silk as a "Commissioner" to search for and take al...

Although there is not much law in this case, the Court of Appeal's decision in Meridian International Services Ltd v Richardson and others [2008] EWCA Civ 609 (4 June 2008) serves as an object lesson in the need for agreeing who will hold title to a computer program or other copyright work. It is a case that the sort of people who consult me should bear in mind. That is because big companies are usually much more likely to address this issue during negotiations than SME (small and medium enterprises). In April 2006 the claimant company agreed to supply a financial forecasting system to a division of GlaxoSmithKline. That agreement contained a warranty that the claimant owned the intellectual property in the system. It outsourced the development of the software to the defendants but failed to make sure that it would acquire title to the copyrights and other IPR that might subsist in the defendants' work. Consequently, the claimant was in breach of warranty and in effect ...

Being transsexual is not perhaps the best career move for a middle aged intellectual property barrister. Not even for one such as I with an unconventional practice. I thought long and hard about deleting this blog and starting again on Typepad in my new name. But Movable Type costs money and I'm from Yorkshire. Anyway, everybody who knows me professionally knows of my change of name and gender. I am not ashamed of myself or of the posts that I contributed under my old name. So more of the same? Not quite. I will still post case notes, summaries of important legislation, bits of gossip here and there from the robing room, LES meeting and the like info about local IP seminars and other events. However, I will try to lighten it up a bit with some funny stories. Plenty of those about in real life if you live in the setting for "Last of the Summer Wine " and practise the same profession as Rumpole .

I am grateful to Stephen Nipper for drawing my attention to a new blog published by ip.com Inc called " Securing Innovation". He actually calls it an IP blog of note . The blog focuses on IP management and it has some interesting articles on the company's services. Ip.com is actually a company I know a little since its UK arm is or at least was managed by my very good friend Dr. Ron Jones of Horizon Ceramics . It offers a number of services in this country including conferences and seminars on IP. I had the pleasure of speaking at one at Lancaster University last year. Its other services include searches, a secure document repository and a service called " defensive publication " which is probably more relevant to a first-to-invent regime like the USA than a first-to-file system like our own. Ron's wife, Wei Huang , runs a very interesting consultancy called VTZ International which assists UK and other foreign businesses to sell to or invest in China....

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...

I am glad to announce a winner of my pork pie offer. The first and so far only person outside West Yorkshire to pronounce Slaithwaite like a local is Mrs Jean Sutherland. Jean is a Scottish solicitor of West Country and North British provenance residing and domiciled in Caledonia. Having said that, she did go to school in Harrogate and lived in Elland for a while. Nevertheless she qualifies for the prize and if E. Grange & Son do mail order one of their biggest and juiciest pies is on its way to the homeland of Barney and Beazley's new friend .

After sounding off about the contemptible attack on the rule of law in Pakistan including the sickening sight of attacks on peaceful demonstrations by lawyers a few weeks ago, I vowed to stick to intellectual property in future. However, this spectacle by an honorary silk, bencher and first lord of the Treasury warrants another departure from this blog's editorial policy. Tone doesn't even make top billing. Starpulse rates Alan Jackson (whoever he may be) as the main guest star. This episode reminds me of the depiction at Naqsh-e Rustam of the humiliation of two Roman emperors by Shapur I of Persia. Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised. Cartoons often drew Tone as a poodle, didn't they.

Just to let you know that I have uploaded the passing off page in the brands tree of WikIP. Just in case you missed it, the revisions to the European Patent Convention agreed at Munich on 29 Nov 2000 came into force yesterday. It's already spawned the Patents Act 2004 . If you want a belly laugh just look at the sort of guff that our wonderful government trumpeted in its press release (see Lord Triesman's press release on the UK-IPO website). Not a word about art 2 of the Protocol on the Interpretation of art 69 EPC you'll notice. They talk about nothing else in Slaithwaite Working Men's Club. A free Granges pork pie by the way, for the first reader not of West Riding residence or provenance to ring me up with the correct pronunciation of Slaithwaite. Clue, a pompous specimen of the y o u n g ba r from the Smoke called Braithwaite got very tetchy when I referred to him as "my learned friend Mr Browit". Not surprising really when you think about the total lack...

One of the recommendations of the late lamented DTI's Innovation Report of 2003 was to develop a new strategy for dealing with IP Crime. Accordingly the UK- IPO set up set up a specialist IP Crime Group in 2004 to: - Carry out a National IP Crime Strategy and publish an Annual Enforcement Report - Bring together government policy-makers, industry and enforcers to create a co-ordinated approach to IP enforcement - Establish an accurate measurement of IP crime within the UK - Identify areas of threat and specific harm - Support training for enforcement officers and spread best practice - Build a more consistent approach to enforcement of IP crime and - Raise consumer awareness. The latest annual report has now been published and it makes pretty depressing reading. Apparently The true measure of the level of IP crime within the UK or for that matter the whole of the OECD is unknown but believed to be "significant". The Group makes the following recommendations: ...

Thank you to everyone who has had a kind word for my IP Wiki, especially David Pearce who pointed out that my IP wiki was not the first in the UK. It rather reminds me of "IPKat eats Humble Pie" a couple of years ago when the IPKat team found out that I was not the first barrister to publish an IP Blog. David has referred me to UK Patents for which I am grateful because it is really good. I have changed the name of the wiki from "Intellectual Property" to " WIKIP ". Such an obvious pun. Someone must surely have fenced it off for am IP wiki before now. Actually, someone has registered it as a domain name but for what appears to be an excellent beverage called zrii which is "a blend of pure natural fruits and herbs based on 5,000 years of Ayurvedic health wisdom and Western medical science which work together in a nutritional preservative free form. Apparently the "Zrii taste enlivens the tongue and delivers the potency of amalaki" (see htt...

This was the second round of a case that had already been partly decided by Mr Justice Lewison nearly 4 years ago (see Societa Esplosivi Industriali SPA v Ordnance Technologies Ltd . and Others [2004] EWHC 48 (Ch) (21 Jan 2004)). That judge had declined to decide certain issues at that trial because the defendants had failed to give adequate disclosure. The issues that remained were: - whether the defendant Ordnance Technologies Ltd. and its former managing director were in breach of contract; - whether they had infringed the claimant's copyright; - whether they had breached obligations of confidence and equitable confidence; and - whether they had infringed the claimant's design right. The dispute concerned weapons systems, namely multiple warhead systems and dense metal penetrators . By the time the adjourned issues came on for trial, Ordnance Technologies Ltd. had been wound up and the dispute was essentially between the claimant and that company's former managing...

We were one of the first barristers' chambers with a website , one of the first with a blog, one of the first with a ".eu" TLD (though we have not yet decided how to use it), one of the few with a ".law.pro" domain (though we are probably going to give that up) and the first with a WAP site (which we definitely have given up). Now we are one of the first (if not the first) to launch and support a voluntary public wiki for our area of the law. We could be wrong, but we think we have the first IP law wiki anywhere - at least in the UK Like our other websites and this blog, the wiki will concentrate on advice for SME and creative and innovative individuals. They need specialist legal services just as much as Siemens and Microsoft but can't afford the silly fees that are often charged for such services. Though this has been launched and is supported by nipc it is open to everyone with an interest in IP and technology law and we hope everybody will take part.

Governments undertake international obligations to protect the intellectual assets of their own and other countries' nationals but what happens if they don't? What if, for example, a state does not enforce its brand new copyright statute or even enact copyright legislation with the result that pirate copies of first run films or the latest application software flood world markets? If the delinquent state belongs to the WTO (World Trade Organization) victims of that state's failure to suppress piracy can ask their government to call upon that state to comply with its obligations under TRIPs (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ). If that state fails to do mend its ways, the complaining state can call for consultations under Annexe 2 to the WTO Agreement. Should those consultations fail a dispute settlement panel can be set up which will report to the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO. If a breach is found and the member in breach still does not live up t...

At noon today I am to give a talk to the bright eyed and bushy tailed inventors of Bradford at Gumption for Business Link, West Yorkshire . These talks are supposed to be very upbeat and uplifting but sometimes I think it is useful to let folk know the very hard bargain that we the British public drive with inventors. This is a short extract from my manuscript: “If you can persuade us that you have invented a new, inventive and useful product or process that does not fall within a number of exceptions, if you teach everyone in the industry how to make or use it, and then pay us a lot of money we shall register a specification of your invention at our intellectual property office. Registration will give you the a monopoly of that product or process in our territory known as a “patent” and so long as you keep paying us a lot of money periodically, you can enjoy that monopoly for up to 20 years. We can’t promise that you will make any money from your invention. That’s up to you and your ...

One of the recommendations of the Gowers Report on Intellectual Property was for the Ministry of Justice (as the Department of Constitutional Affairs is now called) to "review the issues raised in relation to IP cases and the fast track and seek views in the context of its forthcoming consultation paper, which will consider the case track limits, and how the claims process can be made more timely, proportionate and cost-effective. It should bring forward any proposals for change by the end of 2007" (Recommendation 54). Like much of the report this recommendation was based on the false premise that "many of the benefits of the fast track system, such as capped costs, limited trial length and limited disclosure, do not apply to IP cases" (para 6.30). Nobody seems to have mentioned to them the streamlined procedure in the Patents Court and Patents County Court: "A streamlined procedure is one in which, save and to the extent that it is otherwise ordered: (i) all f...

I don't agree with Trevor Baylis on everything (indeed, come to think of it, I don't think I agree with him on most things that I have heard him say) but one of Trev's remarks with which I would heartily agree is that it is never too early to inculcate inventiveness in our schoolchildren. He goes a bit OTT in suggesting copyright notices on school essays but he is on the right lines generally. Now one chap who is already teaching kids to invent is David Garlovsky from the 'Schools and Homes Energy Education Project', who was our speaker at Sheffield Inventors Club this evening. David has a relation in the USA who has invented and now produces flexible solar panels which can do all sorts of neat things like power the second hands of clocks for a time and drive model soap boxes slowly not to mention catamarans made out of plastic bottles. David's not for profit company gets Sheffield school kids to find uses for those panels. In the process they invent things. And...

Regular readers (if there are any left) will have noted that this blog has been very quiet for months on end. There are a couple of reasons for that. One that I can't tell you about just yet but those who know me or indeed those who know Manchester can guess. And one that I can tell you which is that I was foolish enough to be flattered by Gower Publishing to write 65,000 to 75,000 words on enforcing intellectual property rights in everyday language for small business which has proved to be one of the most frustrating and difficult projects of my life. I have just learned that the manuscript has been accepted for publication so yippee. I have to worry about corrections, proofs, authors' blurb and all that sort of guff but at least I can return to regular blogging on a slightly less infrequent basis. Well what better case with which to cast off than Mr Justice Mann's decision in Kitfix Swallow Group Ltd v Great Gizmos Ltd [2007] EWHC 2668 (Ch) (22 Nov 2007). This was an...