NIPC News

World Intellectual Property Organization, Geneva Author Emmanuel Berrod  Licence CC BY-SA 4.0   S ource     Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert I mentioned the government's consultation on standard essential patents in  Latest Consultation on Standard Essential Patent Licensing   on 18 July 2025.  One of the topics is "Tell us how alternative dispute resolution services work for standard essential patent disputes."   According to its "WIPO ADR for FRAND Disputes" page , the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Centre has administered some 80 WIPO mediation cases relating to FRAND licensing negotiations. Here are examples of some of the disputes that the Centre has handled: "Mediations between large SEP holders and implementers in Asia and Europe to facilitate the agreement of FRAND licensing terms. Requests for WIPO Mediation relating to licensing negotiations between patent pool administrators and implementers in relation to ongoing unsuccessful...

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Author bryan...   Licence CC BY-SA 2.0   Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert   In Patents: a New Resource Hub on Standard Essential Patents in May and HMG's other Proposals on FRAND Licensing ,  I wrote on 5 March 2025: "A standard essential patent ("SEP") is a patent that has to be worked in order to comply with a technical standard. Organizations that set such standards (known as standards-setting organizations or SSOs) require SEP proprietors to promise to license the use of their patents to businesses that want to make or distribute products that comply with those standards ("implementers") on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") terms as a condition for including their patents within the standards." I added that in theory such a condition looks very fair and ought to work very well but in many cases it doesn't.  That is because implementers delay paying fees until a c...

Author US Government Licence Public domain Source     Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Since I discussed the Intellectual Property Office's consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence  in  UK Government Launches Consultation on AI and Copyright   on 16 Dec 2024, HM Government has published its  AI Opportunities Action Plan , the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change its Rebooting Copyright: How the UK Can Be a  Global Leader in the Arts and AI   white paper and the World Artificial Intelligence Film Festival  is about to open in Nice. Until recently, attention has focused on the negatives of AI.  The late Stephen Hawking warned that it could end human existence (see Rory Cellan-Jones, Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind   2 Dec 2014).  Others worried that it could reinforce inequalities between sections of society or bolster repression. In his foreword to the Tony Blair Institute white pape...

Source I PO Press Release 17 Dec 2024  Licence   OGLv2.0   Crown Copyright   Jane Lambert The litigation between Getty Images and Stability AI which I discussed in  Copyright and Artificial Intelligence - Getty Images (US) Inc and Others v Stability AI Ltd   on 12 Dec 2023 in NIPC Law shows the need for greater clarity in our copyright law as to the respective rights of content producers and software developers to use materials on the internet to train artificial intelligence models,   In response to that concern the Intellectual Property Office in conjunction with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the  Department for Culture, Media and Sport  has launched a 10-week consultation entitled Copyright and Artificial Intelligence   on how the government can ensure the UK’s legal framework for AI and copyright supports the UK creative industries and AI sector together. The main proposal is to amend the Copyright,...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert On the day that my article   Patents - Interdigital Technology Corporation and others v Lenovo Group Ltd. and others   appeared in which I discussed Mr Justice Mellor's 225-page judgment in Interdigital Technology Corporation and others v Lenovo Group Ltd. and others   [2023] EWHC 539 (Pat ),  the Intellectual Property Office ("IPO") announced a questionnaire on standard essential patents ("SEPs") for SME small-cap and mid-cap businesses. This follows an earlier consultation on SEP licensing that the IPO launched on 7 Dec 2021.  I discussed it in  IPO Consultation on SEPs and Innovation   on 19 Dec 2021.  The IPO received 56 responses to that consultation.  The names of the respondents appear in Annex A  to a Summary of Responses to the Call for Views .  Their responses are analysed in that document.  Bearing in mind the costs of FRAND litigation and that it seems to involve only mass...

European Commission Author  EmDee  Licence  CC BY-SA 4.0  Source  Wikipedia Commons Jane Lambert In the last few years, there has been a spate of litigation throughout the world between businesses that have acquired large portfolios of patents that are essential for compliance with a manufacturing standard which are known as "standard essential patents" ("SEP")  and the world's consumer electronics manufacturers known as "implementors" who want to use their patents.  Standard setting institutions such as ETSI  require the proprietors of SEPs to license their patents to implementors on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") terms. Such an arrangement ought to work very well.   As Mr Justice Marcus Smith said in Koninklijke Philips NV v Asustek Computer Inc. and others [2020] EWHC 29 (Ch) (17 January 2020) at paragraph [7 (4)]: "Standard Essential Patents can be of great value to their holders. Holders can expect a substa...

Intellectual Property Office, Newport Reproduced with kind permission of the Intellectual Property Office Jane Lambert   In  Protecting creativity, supporting innovation: IP enforcement 2020   which was published on 16 May 2020, the Intellectual Property Office promised to review periodically "existing methods of legal recourse for IP infringement to ensure they are effective, consistent, and proportionate."  On 5 Oct 2020, it announced a call for evidence from IP rights owners to inform that review.   The closing date for submissions is 11:45 on 2 Nov 2020. There are three key themes for the review;  the cost of legal challenges,  how accessible and effective the judicial process is, and  improvements to the Small Claims Track of the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court.  There is also a discussion on whether to include registered designs disputes within the jurisdiction of the Small Claims Track. The Introduction  states that t...

Jane Lambert I hope all my readers had a good Christmas and I wish them a happy and prosperous New Year, A hot topic for the New Year is likely to be the legal protection of inventions, artistic and literary works, designs and other intellectual assets that are created by machines.  Three of the papers of the Life Science IP Conference which was held at at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel on 26 and 27 Nov 2019 addressed the topic as did two of the papers at the International Copyright Law Conference  which was held in London a few days later.  Francis Gurry , the Director-General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (the UN specialist agency for IP) discussed the subject in an interview entitled Intellectual property in a data-driven world   which appeared in the October issue of the WIPO Magazine. This is not a new subject.  I can remember articles and conference papers on the topic for as long as I have been at the Bar.  ...

Jane Lambert As I noted in The Trade Secrets Directive 7 July 2016 NIPC Law, Directive (EU) 2016/943 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2016 on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information (trade secrets) against their unlawful acquisition, use and disclosure has to be transposed into national law by 9 June 2018. The Intellectual Property Office has published draft regulations that appear in Annex A of a consultation document on draft regulations concerning draft secrets.  These regulations are likely ti be called "The Trade Secrets (Enforcement, etc.) Regulations 2018." A news story dated 19 Feb 2018 explains that the government is canvassing views on those draft regulations and has posed the following questions: "Q1. Do you agree that regulations 2 and 3 implement effectively the definitions in the Directive? Q2. What are your views on the rules set out in regulations 4 – 9? Q3. Do you agree t...

Jane Lambert Regulation (EU) 2017/1128 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2017 on cross-border portability of online content services in the internal market is known as "the Portability Regulation." It a sensible piece of legislation that should enable subscribers to online services to continue to receive the content that they have paid for when visiting another member state.   The reason for the Regulation is that copyright is territorial. A subscriber in the UK is licensed to receive content under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 but not under the legislation of any other member state.  As it was made by the Council and European Parliament the Regulation will come into force automatically on 20 March 2018 pursuant to art 11 (2).  However, as it will affect existing legislation and it will need to be enforced.  To make provision for this Regulation the Intellectual Property Office has published a draft statuto...

Author Hydragyrum Reproduced with kind permission of the Author Jane Lambert Since my last News Roundup   on 12 Oct 2017 I have written about copyright in photographs and television gameshow formats. the construction of patent licence terms and the English courts' jurisdiction to hear applications for declarations of non-infringement. I have also discussed the second reading of the Data Protection Bill in the House of Lords and the Irish High Court's referral to the Court of Justice of the European Union of the question of whether standard contract terms for the transfer of data overseas comply with EU law. I have continued to monitor the Brexit negotiations and discussed a joint letter from the British government and the Commission on our future relationship with the World Trade Organization. I attended the annual meeting of the WIPO domain name dispute resolution panellists and wrote about it in NIPC Branding. I discussed an IPO consultation o...