NIPC Law

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 ...

Lantana Ltd . ( "Lantana" ) is a California company that offers communication cable services, telephone systems and services and computer and data network services mainly to customers in Southern California . One of the company's employees invented a "method, systems, and computer program products for retrieving a file of machine readable data" for which Lantana applied for patents in the USA and around the world under the Patent Co-operation Treaty. The Invention  The invention is described in the abstract of the application as follows: "A user, wishing to retrieve a file of machine-readable data from a remote machine-readable data storage device, transmits a first e-mail message from a local station to a remote station via a packet switched network. The first e-mail message includes a first machine-readable instruction and a first machine-readable retrieval criterion. The remote station receives the first e-mail message from the packet ...

The National Guild of Removers and Storers is a trade association for the removal industry. According to its website "The Guild's priority has always been, and remains, consumer protection in an industry where there are no specific laws to protect the moving public" and its efforts in respect of consumer protection have been recognized by Which.  As a result, the Guild has a good reputation among the public making it advantageous to become a member.  The Guild has a number of trade marks which it allows its members to reproduce on their stationery, marketing literature and websites for so long as they remain members of the Guild. When a remover ceases to be a member of the Guild it is required to remove the trade mark and references to the Guild immediately. If it fails to do so the Guild sues it for trade mark infringement or passing off. The Guild has brought a number of infringement proceedings over the years against its former members and the damages that have...

Money Photo Wikipedia I last discussed this litigation in  Success Fees and ATE Premiums in the Patents County Court: Henderson v All Around the World Recordings Ltd   4 May 2013. I set out the basic facts in my case note: "This was an action for infringement of a performer's rights which Judge Birss QC (as he then was) decided in Henderson v All Around the World Recordings Ltd and Another [2013] EWPCC 7 (13 Feb 2013)....... She had not been entirely successful and the costs of an unsuccessful copyright claim and half the costs of an application were awarded against her but she had succeeded overall." The claimant had entered a conditional fee agreement with specialist solicitors and counsel because it was the only way she could bring this litigation. Her total costs and disbursements including success fees and after-the-event premiums would have been £232,676.20 had they been allowed but Judge Birss QC (as he then was) awarded her only...

British Library Photo Wikipedia One of the consequences of extending the term of copyright in many types of copyright has been a massive increase in the number of works in which copyright subsists whose owners cannot be identified or found. Such works are known as "orphan works" and HM government claims that there are some 91 million of them in the UK alone.  Because their owners cannot be traced orphan works cannot lawfully be reproduced even for preservation. Consequently, works recorded on such media as celluloid film and magnetic tape may be lost for ever.  Much of that work is culturally important and some of it is of considerable scientific interest such as patient records in studies of malaria.  In Digital Opportunity: A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth   Professor Hargreaves described the problem of orphan works as "the starkest failure of the copyright framework to adapt." The Orphan Works Directive This is not of cour...

As I indicated in  How the Intellectual Property Act 2014 changes British Patent Law   JD Supra 21 June 2014 s.16 of the Intellectual Property Act 2014 amends s.74A and s.74B of the Patents Act 1977 and inserts three new subsections into s.73. The upshot as explained in paragraph 4  and paragraph 5  of the IPO's guide Expansion of the Patent Opinions Service: business guidance is that the range of questions upon which an examiner's opinion can be obtained has been expanded and the Comptroller now has power to revoke patents which are found to be invalid. Where to find the Law The Patents Act 1977 has now been amended by art 3 and the Schedule  to The Intellectual Property Act 2014 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional Provisions) Order 2014 (SI 2014 No 2330) (see Jane Lambert  The Intellectual Property Act 2014 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional Provisions) Order 2014   6 Sept 2014) and corresponding changes to the Paten...

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 ...