Events 2019

Find out more about the events held in 2019

Patents vs Open Innovation: Incentivising 'Medicines for the Many'

27 November 2019

About the event:

How do we devise a suitable incentive scheme for the development of new pharmaceuticals and innovative health treatments? Traditionally, this has been the role of the patent system, but increasingly, claims are made that this focusses R&D efforts in the direction of greatest profits, rather than towards those areas of greatest public need. Patents – it is said – encourage the antithesis of open, collaborative research and render many new drugs unaffordable despite rising patient need.

While some advocate patent pools to ensure access to essential medicines or proffer prizes as a partial solution, others propose a Health Impact Fund. The topic looks likely to be a live issue in the forthcoming election. In September, UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn asserted “We will tell the drugs companies that if they want public research funding, then they will have to make their drugs affordable for all.” Launching its ‘Medicines for the Many' policy document, the party pledges to ‘break patents’ by dusting off compulsory licensing provisions and making the very latest drugs available on the NHS via a public-owned generics company. Meanwhile, a recent NHS Confederation report suggests that the real price of Boris Johnson’s much touted post-Brexit trade deal with the USA is £billions on nation’s drugs bill.

In its annual Innovation Lecture, UCL's Institute of Brand and Innovation Law brought together a distinguished panel to identify the problems of the current patent-based system and to investigate whether open innovation is the potential solution.

Speakers:

Dr Galit Gonen-Cohen, Head of Intellectual Property Law at Novartis, former VP and General Counsel, Europe, Teva
Professor Matthew Todd, Professor of Drug Discovery at UCL School of Pharmacy
Professor Adrian Towse, Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Director Emeritus of the Office of Health Economics

Chair: The Hon. Mr Justice Birss

Find out more about the event here, see the panel's presentation slides here or watch the event here on our YouTube channel.

The Confusion Test in European Trade Mark Law

14 November 2019

About the event:

IBIL was delighted to host this event to mark the launch of Dr Ilanah Fhima's new monograph, The Confusion Test in European Trade Mark Law, written with Professor Dev Gangjee, University of Oxford.

The event commenced with an afternoon roundtable workshop attended by 25 trade mark experts including academics and practitioners. A panel comprising Allan James (Head of Trade Mark Tribunal, UK IPO), Gordon Humphreys (Chair of the 5th Board of Appeal, EUIPO), Emma Himmsworth QC (Appointed Person, One Essex Court) and Professor Robert Burrell (Oxford University) led discussions on selected themes from the book, chaired by Sir Richard Arnold, Lord Justice of Appeal. The was followed by a reception for colleagues, contacts and friends of the authors, including a brief presentation on the book by Lord Justice Arnold.

The book is the first comprehensive and systematic account of the confusion test within the harmonised European trade mark system. It considers how the test is applied by national trade mark registries across EU member states, by the EUIPO, by national courts, and by the CJEU, while also evaluating the viability of more recent developments such as initial-interest confusion, post-sale confusion and consumer responses to uses of trade marks on the internet.

Find out more about the event here, details of the book can be found here, and a review of the book can be found here.

Copyright and Collective Authorship

23 October 2019

About the event:

IBIL was delighted to host this panel discussion event to mark the launch of Dr Daniela Simone’s new book Copyright and Collective Authorship: Locating the Authors of Collaborative Work, published by Cambridge University Press, and cited by the Court of Appeal in Kogan v Martin [2019] EWCA 1645.

As technology makes it easier for people to work together, large-scale collaboration is becoming increasingly prevalent. Although it is vital to identify who are the authors of collaborative work, current copyright law fails to provide a coherent or consistent answer. The book engages with the problem of how authorship of highly collaborative works should be determined. Using four case studies as examples – Wikipedia, Australian Indigenous art, scientific collaborations and film, the book shows how copyright could be recalibrated to better assign authorship in the case of collaborative works by considering social norms and the specific context of the work’s creation. The book argues for an inclusive approach that is both true to the legal concept of authorship and also more aligned with creative reality.

Speakers:

Dr Daniela Simone, UCL Laws and Co-director of IBIL
Professor Tanya Aplin, Kings College London
Professor Séverine Dusollier, SciencesPo Paris.

Find out more about the book here, about the event here or watch this talk here on our YouTube Channel.

IP and ADR

1 May 2019

About the event:

A conference organised by UCL IBIL, WIPO, Munich IP Dispute Resolution Forum (IPDR), and the Center for Intellectual Property and Competition Law, Zurich University (CIPCO).

Intellectual Property (IP) is of ever-growing importance in modern economies, and so are IP disputes. Increasingly, such disputes are resolved by way of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms. The FRAND licensing of standard-essential patents, as well as the Life Sciences sector are two areas in which mediation and arbitration are prominent, promising, but also challenging in some respects.

Speakers:

Juliane Buchinski (Lead IP Litigation Counsel Europe, ZTE), Ignacio de Castro (Deputy Director, WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center), Trevor Cook (WilmerHale), Claudia Feller (Simmons & Simmons), Dr. Clemens Heusch (Head of European Litigation, Nokia), The Rt Hon Lord Justice Floyd, Prof. Sir Robin Jacob (UCL IBIL), Dr. Monika Hupfauf (Koch/Hupfauf Attorneys), Prof. Dr. Peter Meier-Beck (German Federal Supreme Court), Prof. Dr. Peter Georg Picht (Center for Intellectual Property and Competition Law (CIPCO), University of Zurich), Gavin Pope (Head of Legal Global Pharmaceuticals Development, Medical Affairs & Litigation, Novartis Pharma AG), Raffael Probst (Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich), Judge Randall Rader (former Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit), Dr Ralf Uhrich (Patent Litigation Counsel, Google), Annet van Hooft (van Hooft Legal), Judge Dr Matthias Zigann (Presiding Judge, Regional Court Munich I).

Find out more about the event here or watch the recordings on our YouTube channel: Sessions 1-3; Session 4 and Session 5.

Exhaustion of Intellectual Property Rights

28 March 2019

About the event:

In the world of intellectual property rights, it is the exhaustion of rights doctrine which determines how far an IP owner may control IP-protected products after the first act of authorised distribution, including their territorial distribution. Depending upon your viewpoint, parallel importers either benefit society by encouraging cross-border trade and reducing consumer prices, or they operate in a murky 'grey market' and free-ride unfairly on investments made by innovators and brand owners. IBIL brought together a distinguished panel to navigate the complex legal landscape which governs exhaustion of intellectual property rights.

Speakers: