IP and IT

• Data Loss - What to Do The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued guidance for organisations that lose personal data, having reported that it has been notified of nearly 100 such incidents to date. One of the less intuitively obvious suggestions is to think...
• Dealing With Breach of Patent When you discover that a business has breached your patent, what should you do? The answer to this question has two elements. The first is based on what you can do in law and the second is based on business strategy. Firstly, before picking a fight with...
• Dealing With Subject Access Requests Many businesses regard the Data Protection Act 2018 as something that merely requires a lot of form filling and the payment of fees, but there is a lot more to it than that. The purpose of the Act is to protect a person's right to privacy with regard to...
• Direct Marketing Via E-mail - Regulations UK law relating to the sending of unsolicited direct marketing material by electronic means are based on the EC Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications and are modified by the General Data Protection Regulation which started to be enforced in...
• E-Commerce Law on Disclosure - Compliance Guide The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations introduced specific legislation to underpin e-commerce. If your business has an Internet presence then you need to make sure that you are not falling foul of these new rules. The Regulations do not just...
• Enforcing Copyright - The Basics Copyright is a right that exists as soon as you create the copyright material. You do not have to apply for it. There are some exceptions to copyright, but unless one of these applies, anyone else using your material without your permission is infringing...
• Freedom of Information - What it Means in Practice The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000 came fully into force on 1 January 2005. It has serious implications for businesses doing business with the public sector. The reason for this is that because one of the aims of the Act is to engender greater...
• ICO 'Must Do' Data Protection Guide   The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has published a guide to protecting personal data , ' which it describes as outlining the procedures organisations must follow to ensure data security. In the wake of a fine of £200,000 being...
• IPO Guidance on Brexit The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has published a guide on how intellectual property (IP) law is likely to be affected following Britain's withdrawal from the EU. The IPO's aim is to 'continue to protect all existing registered European Union Trade...
• Intellectual Property: Who Owns It? One of the biggest sources of disputes in industries based on innovation is a difference of opinion about who owns the intellectual property (IP) created in terms of designs, software, processes and systems. This is a general guide for businesses to the...
• Patent Searches Checking for existing patents in force is easy (and free) if you use the UK Intellectual Property Office's (UKIPO) patent databases which are accessible online. The new databases replace the Patents Journal and are designed to make obtaining information...
• Patents - The Basics Some people may think that once you have obtained patent protection for your product, you need do nothing further to protect your rights against infringement or to claim damages from an infringer. However, in many jurisdictions, merely being the owner of a...
• Protecting Your Design Rights Protecting intellectual property has always been a complex area of law, but in one specific area things may be getting clearer. The Registered Designs Regulations 2001 include several protections for inventors of designs. If you have a new design which is...
• Registering a Trade Mark Your business has its own unique brand and reputation and it is vital in a competitive marketplace to ensure that these are protected from unscrupulous third parties. Some business owners do not believe there is any point in registering their trading or...
• The Eight Data Protection Principles Anyone processing personal data must comply with the eight enforceable principles of good practice. Here is a checklist. Data must be: fairly and lawfully processed; processed for limited purposes; adequate, relevant and not excessive; ...
• What to do When Your IT Doesn't Work These days it is increasingly the case that when your IT doesn't work, neither does your business. Clearly, the best way to deal with IT problems is prevention, which means doing regular backups, proper systems maintenance, keeping anti-virus protection up...