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Proposal to amend Brussels I Regulation rumbles on
As noted back at the end of July the European Commision adopted a Proposal (2013/0268 (COD), which can be found here) for a regulation amending the Brussels I Regulation on the jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (Reg. No 1215/2012). This amendment is necessary to bring the Agreement on the Unified Patent Court into effect. (more…)
UK: Intellectual Property Bill – Date of 2nd reading in Commons announced
Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament
A brief update on the Intellectual Property Bill. The Parliament website has just been updated with a date, 9th December 2013, for the Bill’s second reading in the House of Commons. The current version of the Bill, as brought from the Lords, can be found here.
The first reading of a Bill in the House of Commons is usally a formality and takes place without debate. The second reading of the Bill rsepresents the first time that MPs can debate the general purpose of the Bill. Individual clauses and amendments will be covered in the next stage, Committee stage.
Update (10.12.13): the 9th December session in the House of Commons was devoted to tributes to Nelson Mandela. It is IPcopy’s understanding that the second reading of the IP Bill will now occur after the Christmas break.
Mark Richardson 29 November 2013
Scotland’s future & IP
The Scottish government released its White Paper on Wednesday mapping out Alex Salmond’s vision for an independent Scotland. The full 670-page report is available here and it details “the most comprehensive blueprint for an independent country ever published” (BBC). Whether that’s completely accurate or not I guess only time will tell but a quick skim seems to suggest that it could be summarised as “anything that we’ve got now that’s good, we’ll keep. Everything else will be better.”
Buried deep within the White Paper in the Q&A section of Part 5 are a couple of references to intellectual property.
CIPA “The UPC Needs You” webinar & other unitary patent snippets
A couple of weeks ago, on 13 November, CIPA held a webinar (“The UPC is calling You”) on the application process for unified patent court judges. The closing date for expressions of interest for UPC judges was 15th November 2013 and according to the Unified Patent Court website there has been an overwhelming response to the call for expression of interest of candidate judges. Not bad for a job where the salary, benefits, exact training schedule etc are not yet known!
The Unitary Patent and the UPC – CIPA seminar 19th November 2013
Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at the CIPA seminar “The Unitary Patent and the UPC” with Alan Johnson of Bristows LLP and Tim Roberts. A copy of the slides for my section of the talk is enclosed below along with some links to additional information covered in the talk (the Poland Deloitte report and some views on the impact of the Scottish Referendum).
A not entirely serious look at Clause 13 of the IP Bill….
Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament
Clause 13 of the Intellectual Property Bill is attracting a fair amount of discussion on both sides of the argument. I thought I’d take a closer look at some of the issues around the clause and what happened before its appearance in the Bill. I must have been in a funny mood when I wrote the post below as its in the style of a totally fictional conversation between a client and his patent attorney. See if you can guess which side of the argument I come down on…… (more…)
EPO changes rules on Euro-PCT searches
Somewhat lost alongside the exciting announcement that the EPO is going to scrap the controversial 2 year divisional deadline rule was another recent decision of the Administrative Council.
Readers of the consultation section on the EPO website will have been aware that there was a consultation earlier in the year relating to Rule 164 and in a decision dated 16 October 2013 the Administrative Council duly announced a change to Rule 164 (which is reproduced in full at the bottom of the post). The amended Rule 164 is scheduled to enter into force on 1 November 2014 for any application for which the supplementary European search report under Article 153(7) EPC has not been drawn up as of 1 November 2014 or the first communication under Article 94(3) EPC and Rule 71(1) and (2) EPC or, as the case may be, Rule 71(3) EPC has not been drawn up as of 1 November 2014. (more…)
Unitary patent package – Ratification update
As noted on the Bristows website the French Senate launched, on 23 October 2013, a Bill authorising ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement. The Bill can be found here and contains an overview of the UPC system. The Bill has been flagged up under an accelerated procedure which presumably means France is pushing to be the first of the “required 3” countries to ratify the Agreement (the other two required countries are the UK and Germany).
The UK’s IP Bill is, of course, in the House of Commons where it is currently awaiting a date for its second reading. UK ratification is not expected until early 2015. If anyone knows the state of play in Germany then feel free to drop us a line or post a comment below!
Mark Richardson 1 November 2013
IPcopy in Washington – Part 2: AIPLA 2013 – Developments in EP patent law
Last week IPcopy had the pleasure of attending the annual meeting of AIPLA in Washington. As well as listening to some of the hot issues of the day on the US side of the pond (section 101/patent eligibility and non-practising entities in particular – see our earlier post here) we also got the chance to get some US practitioner’s thoughts on the European patent landscape.
What follows below therefore are some European developments that may be of interest to our US colleagues. (more…)
Patent box and R&D tax credits – musings from a recent presentation
We’ve written a fair amount recently on IPcopy about the UK’s patent box regime and R&D tax credits. However a few weeks ago we were treated at Keltie to a great presentation from Kevin Phillips and Andy Nash from Baker Tilly on both subjects from which I’ve extracted the following points that caught my eye/ear.
IPcopy 