NIPC Law

The Rolls Building Author Judicial Office Licence CC BY-SA 4. 0   Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Last week I chaired 4 of the 5 daily sessions of Informa's Cambridge IP "Winter School"  and delivered 3 of the talks. The title of the last of those talks (which was also the last talk of the Winter School) was IP Litigation in England and Wale s. I offered that talk because not all the attendees in previous years' summer schools had been legally qualified and many of those who were so qualified were new to IP.  It seemed to me that there was not much point in discussing the complexities of IP litigation without a grounding in the basics. IP litigation differs from other types of civil litigation in many ways.  It has its own rules and practice direction.  Much IP business is conducted in specialist courts and all of the rest are in a specialist list in the Chancery Division.  IP litigation can be particularly expensive which is why threats to br...

Basher Eyre / Junction of Fetter Lane and Rolls Buildings Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Birss)   Nicoventures Trading Ltd v Philip Morris Products, SA ( [2020] EWHC 1594 (Pat) (16 June 2020) This was an application by Philip Morris Products SA ("Philip Morris") to expedite the trial of an action that it had brought against British American Tobacco ("BAT") for the invalidation of European patents (UK) 3 398 460 and 3 491 944 for heated tobacco products which had been invented by John Howard Robinson and others ("the Robinson patents").  BAT resisted the application on the ground that the case for expedition had not been made out. However, there was also a contingent cross-application by BAT for expedition of the trial of an action that it had brought against Philip Morris for the invalidation of the Robinson patents and a counterclaim for the infringement of European patents (UK) 3 248 484, 3 248 486, and 3 248 483 for heated ...

Manchester Civil Justice Centre Author Skip88  Reproduced with kind permission of the author Wikipedia   Jane Lambert The Practice Direction - Pre-Action Conduct and Protocol s has been updated with effect from 9 Oct 2019.  It was last updated on 29 April 2015 and I wrote about the changes in What to do about the new Practice Direction - Pre-Action Conduct on 6 May 2015.   I explained the importance of the Practice Direction in Pre-Action Correspondence - Not Just a Box to be ticked or a Hoop to be jumped through   2 Aug 2017. The updated Practice Direction contains the following paragraphs: Title Number Introduction Para. 1 Objectives of pre-action conduct and protocols Para. 3 Proportionality Para. 4 Steps before issuing a claim at court Para. 6 Experts Para. 7 Settlement and ADR Para. 8 Stocktake and list of issues Para. 12 Compliance with this practice direction and the protocols Para. 13 Limitation Para. 17 Prot...

Manchester Civil Justice Centre Author Skip88 Licence  Copyright waived by the author Source  Wikipedia Jane Lambert According to TaylorWessing's Patent Map , England and Wales remains the most expensive country in Europe in which to contest a patent action. The European Patent Office reports that the UK lay 9th in the number of European patent applications that were filed in 2017 trailing not just the USA, Japan, China and Germany which are considerably bigger in population and GDP than the UK but France, South Korea, Switzerland and the Netherlands that are the same size or smaller (see  European patent filings per country of origin ). It seems likely that the UK's relatively lacklustre performance in the number of European patent applications is connected to the high cost of enforcement.  I have plenty of anecdotal evidence from my practice, patent clinics and inventors' clubs to support that contention. One of the reason...

Jane Lambert The European IPR Helpdesk , an EU-funded collaboration between Infeurope SA , Eurice GmbH  and  L'Institut de la Propriété Intellectuelle Luxembourg  to provide free, first-line advice and information on intellectual property, has recently published two fact sheets on IP and trade fairs. The first, which is entitled  Intellectual property management at trade fairs ,  is addressed to exhibitors at, and visitors to, trade fairs while the second,  IP considerations for trade fair organisers , is addressed to organizers. Both fact sheets were developed in co-operation with the European Major Exhibition Centres Associaton  and the European Exhibition Industry Alliance, Intellectual property management at trade fairs starts with "Things you should know before participating in a trade fair." These include "Knowing the IPRs you own", "Registration is the easiest and most effective way to fight against infring...

Rt. Hon. Theresa May MP Author: Home office Source: Wikipedia Creative Commons Licence Jane Lambert In her Lancaster House speech of the 17 Jan 2017 (the transcript of which can be found on The Independent's website ) the Prime Minister acknowledged that "Britain might at times have been seen as an awkward member state" However, there is one policy upon which we have always been impeccably  communautaire   That   has been the scheme to establish a single European patent for the territories of all the EU member states with a single European patent court. We were one of the few parties to ratify the Community Patent Convention  in 1975 shortly after we joined the EEC. Ever since then our government has participated constructively in deliberations and negotiations both for a Community patent within the framework of the EU (see Community Patent  on the Eur-Lex website) and a European patent litigation agreement ("EPLA") as an optional...