With IP worth 75% of a business’ value why do less than 13% of businesses have IP insurance? It’s fascinating to read the insurance industry’s perspective on this phenomenon: Protecting Intellectual Property in the new world order. I find insurance (& third party funding) essential in many disputes. In most cases, this is "After the Event" or ATE insurance. Matthew Hogg and Edward Cartwright's article makes a great point that many people forget: you may assume that you have

The Janger is designed for travel and holiday use (so probably isn't getting a lot of use at the moment!) Most fashion cases concern design right, copyright and trade marks. It is relatively unusual for patents and fashion to collide. The Janger Ltd v Tesco Plc [2020] EWHC 3450 (IPEC) (16 December 2020) was one of the last cases from 2020 and one of the few to look at patents and fashion. Janger had a patent for “A hangable garment hook”, filed on 17 February 2017. They accus

A case regarding “ballet flats” is likely the last time in which a UK court will sit as a Community Design Court, and the judgment was handed down expeditiously given the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020. The case involved registered Community designs (RCDs) and unregistered Community designs (UCDs), and issues of both validity and infringement. Deputy High Court Judge David Stone found: both the registered and unregistered design to be valid as they pr

Designs are forgotten and misunderstood rights which is a shame because they straddle the issues facing all of the different IP rights. It's hard to truly understand designs without also understanding trade mark, patent and copyright law first. This post is a whistle stop tour of some recent design decisions you may have missed and the first in a regular series of six monthly posts on this topic which I will share as a guest contributor. UK Court decisions Unregistered design

UK unregistered design right (UK UDR) is a handy IP right which is often overlooked by rightsholders.  It protects the shape or configuration of the whole or part of a product for ten years from the date the design was first (or 15 years from the date it was first recorded in a design document if that period is shorter).  UK UDR does not protect surface decoration (unlike Community  unregistered design right and registered designs).  Since the recent procedural reforms in t