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Theresa the Brexit Slayer?
IPcopy has wondered for a while how the UK’s somewhat surprising announcement last November that we would continue preparations for ratifying the UPC Agreement would play out if the news got wider attention in the media. Despite the Government’s insistence that the UPC is an international court rather than an EU institution I couldn’t see this argument playing well with the readership of certain portions of the press who are champing at the bit for the moment we can retake control of our country. (more…)
Brexit through the Lens of IP Law
According to the Government’s White Paper on exiting the EU, the 65 million people of the UK are now willing the Government to make the negotiations happen (see PM’s Foreword, paragraph 4). I must have missed my reprogramming session as I’m still waiting for reality to snap back to normal….
However, even if we are now all on board the Brexit Bus, next stop the cliff edge followed swiftly by the foot of the cliff, it’s still good to see a well researched article on the impacts of Brexit on the IP sphere. The world has, of course, been awash with Brexit News Bulletins ever since the result came in but the latest addition, The Legal Consequences of Brexit through the Lens of IP Law, comes with a sterling pedigree, namely Richard Arnold (a judge at the High Court), Lionel Bentley (University of Cambridge), Graeme Dinwoodie (University of Oxford) and Estelle Derclaye (University of Nottingham). (more…)
Westminster Legal Policy Forum – The future for the UK’s patent framework – Review
IPcopy attended the Westminster Legal Policy Review seminar on 2 February 2017. This post provides a summary of some of the issues raised and discussed at the seminar. (more…)
Innovation & Entrepreneurship START! Challenge hosted by the Imperial College Business School’s Enterprise Lab
HackScience presented with their prize by Dr Markus Perkmann (left) and Bruno Cotta (right)
IPcopy welcomes Monica Patel back to the blog today with a report on the recent I&E START! Challenge Final 2016 at Imperial College’s Business School in which three finalists pitched their business to a panel of investors and competed for a £10,000 prize.
As I walked into the room, I couldn’t help but feel like I was entering the Dragons’ Den (despite the fact that I was in a brightly-coloured lecture theatre at Imperial College’s Business School). Sat behind the three “Dragons”, I had front row seats to the final round of the I&E START! Challenge, hosted by Imperial College Business School’s Enterprise Lab.
The top three teams of the competition, whittled down from a total of eight teams, were each about to deliver their pitch to a panel of judges. Evaluated on market opportunity, product feasibility and plans for growth, the winning team was to be presented with a prize of £10,000 to further develop their business venture. (more…)
Cure is the New Disease – Poisonous divisionals, red-shirts and plums
Watch out for the Gorn (Photo by Ladyheart at Morguefile.com)
“They’re dead, Jim.”
Like the red-shirted crewman in the original series of Star Trek*, the poisonous divisional has apparently breathed its last, though in this case in the comfortable home (for the time being) of the Boards of Appeal in the Isar building of the EPO, rather than a few miles outside of Los Angeles at the Vasquez Rocks where pretty much every episode of Star Trek appears to have been partially filmed.
In this case, the fatal weapon was not a phaser, but a blunt instrument of similar vintage – FICPI Memorandum C (M/48/I) of the travaux préparatoires to the EPC 1973. The analysis of partial priority in this document was used heavily by the Enlarged Board in G1/15 (see 5.2.1 in particular) to indicate how partial priority was embedded in the European patent system, and how it allowed a resounding “No” to be given to the first question referred to the Enlarged Board of Appeal, repeated in all its tongue-tripping elegance below: (more…)
Unitary Patent Package – The Ratification Game (Italy completes its ratification formalities)
Update (13 February 2017)
According to the website of the Council of the European Union, Italy has now deposited its instrument of ratification (on 10 February 2017) to become the 12th country to complete its ratification formalities. Italy joins the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Finland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Malta, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, France and Austria as one of the twelve countries who have completed their ratification processes.
The unitary patent system requires 13 countries to ratify, including the UK, France and Germany. Although the EU Referendum in the UK threw the timescale into doubt, the Preparatory Committee recently confirmed that the target date for the unitary patent system to go live is December 2017.
There are now enough countries to have ratified the unified patent court agreement that the system will come into effect if just the UK and Germany complete their own ratification procedures.
Now that Italy has completed all of the formalities we have updated our ratification infographic (for an answer to the question “What’s up with this infographic?“, please see the bottom of the post!”).
(more…)
UPC update – February 2017
IPcopy recently attended two events that discussed updates to the Unitary patent and Unified Patent Court: CIPA’s “The UPC: Where we are and Why” and the Westminster Legal Policy Forum’s “The future for the UK’s patent framework”.
The CIPA event included presentations from Kevin Mooney (Simmons & Simmons and Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Rules of Procedure of the UPC), Dr Laura Starrs (UK Intellectual Property Office) and Tony Rollins (CIPA President) and the WLPF event included contributions from Kevin Mooney, Tim Frain (Nokia), Tony Rollins, Matt McBrien (BAE Systems) and Margot Fröhlinger (EPO).
IPcopy has summarised some of the points below. (more…)
Euratom, the CJEU, Brexit and the UPC
IPcopy is finding it difficult to reconcile the UK Government’s various announcements regarding the CJEU with continued participation in the unitary patent scheme.
As discussed in an earlier post we suggested that the Government was going to argue that continued participation in the unitary patent scheme was OK, despite the presence of the CJEU within the unified patent court structure, because domestic patent law would be unaffected by the limited influence the CJEU would have over UPC decisions.
Last week it became clear from the explanatory notes accompanying the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill (the “Article 50 bill”) that the Government was intending on pulling out of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) as well as the EU. (more…)
Gowling WLG – Patent Seminar 2017
Elephant in the Room
Various IPCopiers were present last week for the annual patent seminar at Gowling WLG, helmed by the inimitable Gordon Harris.
Alex Brodie opened with some potentially unsettling statistics. Although the numbers of decisions, decisions per court, number per subject matter and type of action were almost identical between 2015 and 2016, the ‘win’ (valid/infringed, valid (at least in part) and infringed) vs. loss stats differed markedly: (more…)
New UPC Implementation Timetable and further UK ratification progress
Following the Brexit vote last June progress on bringing the unitary patent system into operation ground to a halt. The last few weeks however have seen a resumption of activities which was confirmed last week when the Unfied Patent Court Preparatory Committee website posted a new timetable for the UPC Agreement to come into force and the Court to open.
All things being equal the Preparatory Committee sees the Court becoming operational in December 2017. Keeping its end of the bargain, for now, the UK also took the next step in its own ratification process. (more…)
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