NIPC Law

Jane Lambert On 14 May 2014 the Intellectual Property Bill received royal assent. The Act made some far reaching changes in patents, registered design and unregistered design right law which I summarized in "Reflections on the Intellectual Property Act 2014"    7 June 2014   4-5 IP Tech and discussed in detail in " How the Intellectual Property Act 2014 changes British Patent Law"   21 June 2014 JD Supra, "How the Intellectual Property Act 2014 changes British Registered Design Law"   19 June 2014 JD Supra and "How the Intellectual Property Act 2014 will change British Unregistered Design Right Law"   11 June 2014 JD Supra 11 June 2014. On 28 Aug 2014 Lady Neville-Rolfe , Minister for Intellectual Property, signed  The Intellectual Property Act 2014 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional Provisions) Order 2014  which will bring many of the provisions of the Act into force. Commencement Art 3 of the Order provides that most of the...

The "Denver" claimed as a work of artistic craftsmanship  in Hensher v Restawhile   [1976] AC 64 Source  Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law, Virtual Museum Despite the submissions of Sir Robin Jacob , leading academic lawyers, the IP Federation , the IP Bar Association  and the other intellectual property professions HM government seems determined to force through criminal sanctions for registered design and registered Community design infringement. Why HMG has set and indeed held to this course in the face of almost unanimous opposition from those who know most about intellectual property is a mystery but there it is. Governments do silly things sometimes of which the Dangerous Dogs Act is but one example. What happens next I have done all that I can as a citizen to persuade HMG to think again by   explaining in this blog why this proposal is a very bad idea ,  lobbying my MP  and even  remons...

Lord Younger, Former Minister for IP Crown Copyright, Open Government Licence In Digital Opportunity, A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth   Professor Ian Hargreaves made 10 recommendations for IP policy which I discussed at length in " IP Policy: Does Hargreaves say Anything New?"  24 June 2011. Some of those recommendations required primary legislation. Others did not.  As I said in my article, Hargreaves was not the first review of IP policy in recent years and most of the previous ones had been left to gather dust.   I suspected the same would happen to Hargreaves. Implementation of Hargreaves To my surprise and delight, Hargreaves's recommendations were accepted broadly by HM Government ( "HMG" ) (see  "The Government Response to the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth" Aug 2011).  Not only that but HMG actually started to consult on the recommendations and even to implement some of those that do not r...

We have an adversarial system of civil litigation in England and Wales as do most other English speaking countries. In an adversarial system the parties choose the issues over which they wish to fight and produce the evidence that they want the tribunal to consider. By contrast, most of the rest of the world has an inquisitorial system where the tribunal leads an inquiry into the facts. Each system has its advantages and it is beyond the scope of this article to decide which is superior but one advantage of the inquisitorial system is that it is very much cheaper. In the New Patent County Court Rules , Why IP Yorkshire and many other articles as well as in my book Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights I referred to the IPAC report The Enforcement of Patent Rights that compared the costs of patent infringement litigation in France, Germany and the Netherlands in 2003 (between 10,000 and 50,000 euro) with the costs in England and Wales (£150,000 to £250,000 in the Patents County ...