Brexit Countdown: What you should have done to protect your IP and what you can still do

Sheffield Central Library

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Jane Lambert

IP Rights and Brexit  Sheffield Business and IP Centra, Central Library, 6 March 2019 18:00

Because intellectual property protects investment in branding, design, technology and creative output, any change in the nature and extent of the legal protection is likely to impact on the businesses that rely on such protection.  Since EU trade marks, registered and unregistered Community designs, geographical indications and Community plant variety rights will cease to apply to the UK upon its departure from the EU, Brexit will have a substantial impact on all those businesses.

For that reason, I have been writing and speaking about the consequences of Brexit even before the 2016 referendum (see Were we to go - what would Brexit mean for IP? 26 Feb 2016 NIPC Law). I contributed the chapter on IP to Helen Tse's Doing Business after Brexit,  I have spoken about the topic at leading law schools (see Implications of Brexit on IP Law 19 Jan 2018). I have followed each and every turn of the Brexit negotiations in my Brexit blog in order to advise my clients accurately and comprehensively (see Brexit - Why do I follow the Art 50 (2) Negotiations when I am an IP Lawyer? 26 July 2018).

It might be thought that everything that can be said about IP and Brexit has been said but, unfortunately, that is not the case.  Unless the notification that the Prime Minister gave to the President of the Council on 29 March 2017 is revoked or the notice period is extended before the 29 March 2019 the UK leaves the EU at 23:00 on that day. The impact of this country's departure on business will depend on whether the country leaves on that date and, if it does, on whether it leaves with or without a withdrawal agreement. As I noted in my latest Brexit Briefing we still have no idea of the terms or even the effective date of our departure.

Ever since the withdrawal agreement negotiations began I have advised businesses to prepare for all eventualities including a no deal Brexit.  I have advised them to review their patent, trade mark and design registration portfolios and apply for national or as the case may be EU registrations to fill possible gaps in their legal protection,  I have advised them to read their licences, franchise, joint venture and other agreements and to draft or negotiate contract terms to fill any lacuna.   It may be too late to do some of those things but there is still much that businesses can do.

My talk will list all the issues businesses will encounter when protecting their brands, designs, technology or creative output and the possible countermeasures. By the end of my talk business owners and managers will have a much better idea of possible risks (and maybe even a few opportunities) and the steps they should take.

If you want to come, register here.  It's free but you do have to book. If you want to talk about this subject call me on +44 (0)20 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message through my contact page.

Trade Missions from Yorkshire to China, Germany, the Netherlands and the USA

Jane Lambert

Yesterday I received an email from DIT North West stating:

"Working closely with our colleagues in both Yorkshire & Humber and the North East, we have created a calendar of 16 trade missions, covering various markets, trade shows and exhibitions to support your business to win sales overseas."

The email contained details of trade missions to California, Amsterdam, Cologne, Dusseldorf, China and Boston between 24 Sept and 28 Nov 2017 for the healthcare, food and drink and other industries.

Should any of my readers in Yorkshire or the Humber wish to learn more about those missions, I have written a short article on them entitled Powerhouse Trade Missions in IP Northwest.  Readers will find in that article a link to the Eventbrite page which contains details of each of the missions with links to the each of the mission Eventbrite pages.

I wish anyone whom goes on any of those missions the very best of luck and would urge them to have regard for their trade secrets and designs. They may find the following extract useful:

"If you plan to go on any of those trade missions, be careful not to disclose anything that you might wish to patent, register as a design or otherwise keep under wraps except in confidence (see Duty of Confidence). However, there is a year's grace period for design registration in Britain and the rest of the EU (see Registered Designs and Registered Community Designs) and don't forget the international exhibition exception provided by s.2 (4) (c) of the Patents Act 1977. Make sure that any non-disclosure or confidentiality agreement is to be construed and enforced in accordance with English law. We are harmonizing our trade secret law across the EU with the Trade Secrets Directive which will come into effect o 9 June 2018 just before Britain flounces out of the EU but we are not there yet (see my article on The Trade Secrets Directive 7 July 2016 NIPC Law).

You must also be aware of the ease with which it is possible for IPR owners to get without notice injunctions just before international exhibitions in Germany and some other countries and serve the orders on the first day (see the penultimate paragraph of Pre-Action Correspondence: What to do if you get a Stroppy Letter ....... or worse 4 Aug 2017 NIPC Law). That nearly happened to one of my clients not long ago. The antedate in Germany is to get a German lawyer to file a Schutzschrift ("protective brief") with the court in which the application is likely to be made setting our reasons why such an order should not be granted. You should also take a look at the arbitration schemes that exist in Italy and Switzerland (see my article Resolving IP Disputes at Trade Fairs 1 June 2017)."

Should anybody wish to discuss any of these matters, call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or send me a message on my contact form.


Further Reading

Northern Powerhouse Index

Meet our IP Attaché to China

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Jane Lambert

Mr Tom Duke is our IP Attaché to China. His job is to build relations with the Chinese government to understand and actively engage with IP policy makers in that country.  He is part of a network of British IP attachés in Brazil, India and South East Asia which has significantly increased the level of support available for UK businesses operating in those markets. Based in the British Embassy in Beijing he supports over 200 companies each year on IP strategies and on dealing with problems such as infringement whenever they arise.

Every year Mr Duke and his colleagues hold a series of business outreach events across the UK called the “China IP Roadshow” with the aim of raising awareness of protecting IP in China amongst (potential) UK exporters and companies involved in other types of business/innovation collaborations with Chinese partners. This year they plan to visit Yorkshire as well as Scotland, Liverpool, Manchester and London.

Mr Duke will be in Yorkshire on 19 Sept 2017 and plans to speak in Leeds morning and Barnsley in the afternoon.  His talk in Leeds will take place in the boardroom of Northern Ballet and the provisional programme is as follows:

09:30 -  10:00	Registration and networking
10:00 - 10:30	Tom Duke, British Embassy Beijing/UK Intellectual Property Office “Succeeding in China – How to mitigate IP risk”
10:30 - 11:30	Other presentations, questions and answer and discussions
11:30 - 12:00	One to one meetings (please request at time of registration)

The Barnsley meeting will take place at the Barnsley Business and Innovation Centre and will follow a similar format:

14:30 -  15:00	Registration and networking
15:00 - 15:30	Tom Duke, British Embassy Beijing/UK Intellectual Property Office “Succeeding in China – How to mitigate IP risk”
15:30 - 16:00	Questions and answer and discussions
16:00 - 16: 30	One to one meetings (please request at time of registration)

According to the WIPO China has a population of 1,371 million and a GDP of US $18,374.71 which is even bigger than that of the USA in terms of purchasing power parity, In 2015 there were nearly a million applications to the SIPO for patents for Chinese inventions. That is more than the applications made to their national patent office by the inventors of any other country. China is an important innovator and shares our national interest in ensuring proper protection for brands, designs, inventions and creative works around the world.

Mr Duke will tell you all about registration of patents, designs and trade marks in China and Hong Kong, licensing and joint ventures and enforcement through the courts and tribunals. As the new Business and Property Courts will launch in Leeds and other major cities I will tell you all about your contractual and IP rights, remedies and liabilities in respect of your dealings with Chinese partners here.

Space is limited at both venues and demand is likely to be heavy. If you want to be sure of your place, call Steve on +44 (0)20 7404 5252 and ask to reserve a place at either venue or send me a message through my contact form.

IP and Fashion Seminar - 7 Oct 2015

For nearly 200 years the Leeds City Region formed one of the twin pillars of the British textile, clothing and fashion industries. Overseas competition has diminished those industries and forced them to specialize but products from this region are still regarded as the best of their kind. I proudly recall visiting an area of Kyoto which consisted entirely of cloth merchants where I found that Huddersfield worsted was the most prized of all. The region has always been an important retail centre. Household names such as Marks & Spencer and Montague Burton started in Leeds.

With initiatives such as Lambert's Yard and the Textile Centre of Excellence in Huddersfield the region is striving to restore its pre-eminence in textile and fashion design and technology.  However, it can only do that if its designers, retailers and manufacturers can properly protect their brands, designs and innovation. That is where intellectual property comes in. Shortly after entering office the Coalition government commissioned Professor Hargreaves to review the legal protection for brands, designs, technology and the creative industries and propose changes in the legislation to promote growth.

Hargreaves came up with nine recommendations in his report DigitalOpportunityA Review of Intellectual Property and Growth all of which were accepted by HM government and have now been largely implemented.  On 10 Sept 2015 I discussed how those changes affect the clothing, fashion and textile industries in a full day seminar in London which received very favourable feedback from most of the 20 solicitors, trade mark attorneys and in-house legal advisers who attended the event  (see IP and Fashion Law 12 Sept 2015 IP London) and I am repeating the talk in Leeds on 7 Oct 2015.

In that seminar  I hope to cover the following topics:

• What sort of IP protection does my employer or client require for his business and where?
• What provisions should I insert in my employer or client's licence or manufacturing agreement?
• What should I do if I find copies or lookalikes of my products in competitors' shops?
• What's Hot? The implementation of s.74 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 - John Kaldor v Lee Ann, Specsavers v ASDA and Thomas Pink v Victoria's Secrets;
• IP basics; terminology, intellectual assets (brands, designs, technology and works of art and literature), intellectual property (trade marks, registered designs and unregistered design rights, patents, trade marks, law of confidence and action for passing off), institutions (Intellectual Property Office, Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market, European Patent Office, World Intellectual Property Organization), Sources of law (treaties and conventions (TRIPs, Paris and Berne), EU legislation, statutes), enforcement. remedies, licensing
• Advising the designer: types of design, aesthetic design, functional design, design registration and equivalent regimes, TRIPS, Paris and Rome Conventions, Designs Directive, Community Design Regulation, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Registered Designs Act 1949, licensing, enforcement
• Advising the manufacturer; patents, trade marks, designs, licensing, cabbage, summary of laws in China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Thailand and Turkey
• Advising the retailer: trade marks, passing off, searches, agreements with designers and manufacturers
• Dispute resolution: High Court, Patent Court, IPEC (multi track and small claims), IPO examiners' opinions, appointed person
• IP strategy: identifying appropriate rights for particular jurisdictions, selecting and instructing foreign attorneys, watch services.

Rather than read from notes and slides I taught the course by setting typical problems such as

"The day after a royal baby makes his or her first public appearance you want to sell a similar set of baby clothes. How would you set about doing that without being sued?"

and

"What provisions would you place in a contract with a supplier from Bangladesh?"I got that idea from Ross Burrows of Burrows Law because that is how he taught the public access top-up and litigation courses which I took last year. He built on participants' knowledge and experience which he encouraged us to share. I decided to do the same next time I taught a CPD training course.

Preparing such courses requires a lot more work on the part of the trainer but it aids comprehension and retention. The overwhelming response of the London group was very positive according to the feedback forms.

If you want to attend this course there are still places available but you will have to move fast. You can register on-line or call MBL Seminars on 0161 793 0984.  The course will start at 09:30 and end at 17:15 and thus earn 6 hours CPD. The standard cost is £480 but there will discounts for season ticket and smart plan subscribers. If you want to discuss this course or any other point of IP law call me on 01484 599090 or 020 7404 5252 or message me through my contact form.  I look forward to meeting you.

In-house IP Training

View of Huddersfield

Photo Wikipedia

Yesterday lunch time I visited a business in Huddersfield to talk to its staff about intellectual property ("IP"). An incident had occurred some months ago when it would have been to their advantage to have known more about IP. Sensibly the company's managing director sought training for its employees and asked a local business advisor to help. The advisor made enquiries at a neighbouring law school but their IP specialist could not assist so the advisor approached me.

That is the sort of invitation I am always happy to accept. As I explained in IP Services from Barristers 6 Apr 2013 4-5 IP:

"It is now permissible for members of the public to consult barristers directly under the Public Access scheme and there are sometimes advantages in doing so, especially in respect of intellectual property. Because we are independent and objective we can advise on the optimum legal protection for a new product or business. For instance, the instinct of a patent attorney is to recommend patent protection for a new invention and in as many countries as possible. Often, that is the best advice but when the inventor is an individual, start-up or small business more nuanced advice is required."

A barrister's job is to obtain the best legal outcome for his or her client and not simply to represent them effectively in court though of course we do that as well. Because we see a lot of disputes we can often spot pitfalls well in advance and advise on how to avoid them. And that is just what I did yesterday.

I was led into a conference room where a table was set up for lunch.  There were different types of bread, cold ham and chicken, fresh fruit salad, profiteroles and a chocolate Yule log. The managing director introduced the trainees, offered us tea and coffee and invited us to tuck in. There were four trainees.  All were women. They were all very bright and it became clear from the conversation that they all had substantial business experience. Each of those ladies had prepared a list of questions and they took it in turns to quiz me.

The first question was on artwork. They were often asked to do artwork for customers who later used it for purposes for which it was not intended. The customers thought they could do what they wanted with the art work just because they had paid a fee. The question boiled down to "who owns the copyright and what licences (if any) are granted or retained?" I referred the ladies to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and in particular to s.11:

"First ownership of copyright
(1) The author of a work is the first owner of any copyright in it, subject to the following provisions.
(2) Where a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or a film, is made by an employee in the course of his employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work subject to any agreement to the contrary.
(3) This section does not apply to Crown copyright or Parliamentary copyright (see sections 163 and 165) or to copyright which subsists by virtue of section 168 (copyright of certain international organisations)."

Their company owned the copyright in any art work that they produced subject to any contract that the company may have made with its customer. That could depend on their company's terms and conditions or on those of their customer. I asked what the company's terms and conditions said about ownership of copyright in its employees' artwork. I was told that there were no terms and conditions. I replied that they should consider getting a lawyer or patent or trade mark agent to draft some for them.

One of the ladies asked whether it might be to their company's advantage "not to have a contract". I responded that they did have a contract but not a written one. In  a dispute over title to copyright in the artwork a judge and lawyers would scour the party to party correspondence, minutes and memos of meetings, previous dealings between the parties and what was normally done in transactions of that kind by other businesses in the industry. All that could take time and cost money and lead to a lot of uncertainty. Much if not all of that could be avoided by adopting a simple set of terms and conditions.

The next question was on artwork for quotations. Sometimes a customer asked them to prepare a quote which might involve quite a lot of work. The customer might reject the quote and take the work to a competitor who could undercut them.  I told them that had actually happened in Pensher Security Door Co. Ltd v Sunderland City Council [2000] R.P.C. 249 and that the Court of Appeal had held that the customer had infringed copyright by taking the design to another company and ordering goods from them.

They asked me how much it would cost for a lawyer or attorney to draft terms and conditions and I replied that it would be between £500 and £750 plus VAT. There was a collective intake of breath around the table suggesting that they thought it was a little on the high side. I decided to discuss the alternatives. "Some companies" I said "simply look at their competitors' websites and lift the legals from them. But that is a mistake for two reasons. First, copyright is likely to subsist in the terms and conditions just as it does in any other kind of work so copying the T & C even with a few changes here and there amounted to copyright infringement for which the copyist might be sued either by the person who drafted the terms or his client. Secondly, terms and conditions are intended to manage risk and the risks of the competing company might not be the same as the company's. It was like wearing another person's clothes. They might cover the body up to a point but they would not fit snugly or look very good."

I pointed out that terms and conditions are rather like the fortifications of Sandal Castle or some other medieval fortress. The first line of defence was the moat which kept out most of the undesirables of medieval Yorkshire such as waifs and strays, thieves and vagabonds, sturdy beggars and wild animals. In a company the moat corresponded to best practice. The next line of defence was the curtain wall from which defenders could rain down arrows, boiling oil and molten lead on more determined invaders. That defence corresponded to insurance. The last line of defence was the keep or bailey and if an invader got that far he had come a long way. That was where the hand to hand fighting might take place such as Macbeth against McDuff. The keep was like terms and conditions. They were for situations where best practice had failed and there was no insurance cover. The T & C had to be integrated with the insurance cover and best practice and that was where the work was to be done. When they considered that the cost of a law suit might run into the hundreds of thousands or even millions the ladies agreed that £500 to £750 was very good value.

We talked about IP insurance and I warned the ladies that many legal expenses insurance specifically exclude IP disputes. I advised them to check the company's policy and consider obtaining additional cover unless they were confident that they could fund any infringement claims that they might wish to bring or defend any revocation or invalidity claims that others might bring against them. They asked about the costs of litigation and I told them all about the Chancery Division and the chancery county courts, the Patents Court, IPEC including its small claims track and other options such as the IPO hearing officers, IPO examiners' opinions, domain name dispute resolution services and various mediation services. One of the ladies asked me to explain the difference between patents and copyrights which led to a discussion on intellectual assets and the different forms of legal protection. Another asked about IP protection abroad and I told them about TRIPs and the international conventions.

I had been booked for an hour but the session lasted nearly double that time. None of us was looking at the clock. The conversation was lively and stimulating and I think we all enjoyed ourselves.  If any other business, law firm or patent or trade mark agency in Yorkshire or indeed anywhere else wants me or one of my colleagues to lead a similar discussion he or she need only ask. I would normally charge about £350 + VAT for a session of this kind but as the initial enquiry had come through a connection who had recommended me in the past I did it for free.

If anyone wants to discuss this article or IP law generally he or she should call me on 020 7404 5252 during office hours or use my contact form.

Finally, I should like to wish all my readers a very happy New Year.

CPD Event - "The Intellectual Property Act 2014 - What it means for you and your clients" Leeds 15 Oct 2014

Jane Lambert

On 14 May 2014 the Intellectual Property Bill received royal assent and became an Act. It implements several of Prof Hargreaves's recommendations including implementation of the Council Agreement on the Unified Patent Court, accession to the Hague Agreement and enhancement of the examiner's opinion service for patents and its extension to designs. More controversially it creates for the first time an offence of intentionally copying a registered or registered Community design.  My colleague Alex Rozycki and I gave a presentation on the new Act on the 19 May 2014. I also write my Reflections on the Intellectual Property Act 2014 in our IP and Tech law blog as well as detailed analyses on the effect of the Act on patent, registered designs and unregistered design right law.

There have been two important developments since them. The first is that Lady Neville-Rolfe, the Minister for Intellectual Property, has signed The Intellectual Property Act 2014 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional Provisions) Order 2014 which brings many of the key provisions of the Act into force on 1 Oct 2014. The second (and potentially the more important) is the consultation on the Unified Patent Court which has just closed.

I shall be discussing those developments and much more besides in a talk that I am giving at the Leeds Business and IP Centre on the 15 Oct 2014 at 18:00 as part of Leeds Business Week. This is an in-depth seminar which should be of interest to specialist IP lawyers and patent and trade mark attorneys for which we plan to give SRA, BSB and, if it can be arranged in time, IPReg points. However, it will also be useful for business owners and managers of all descriptions in all industries as well as artists, designers, inventors and investors in start-ups and other high tech businesses.

Space is limited but you can reserve your place now by calling my clerk, George, on 01484 599090 or 020 7404 5252 or sending him a message through his contact form. I look forward to seeing you there.