United Kingdom: Intellectual Property

A high-profile publishing deal worth £1.5m collapsed after concerns emerged about AI use in manuscript creation, raising critical questions about copyright originality, authorship authentication...

Finally, the court considered the case of PL Travers Will Trust v HMRC [2014] SFTD 265, which concerned the tax treatment of royalty payments under the will of PL Travers, author of the Mary Poppins series. This had found that part of the receipts from the author’s copyrights had been income but only in relation to a specific period in which the trustees had been responsible for the exploitation of the copyright. This was not the case here.

The High Court of England & Wales has granted an unusually broad injunction in favour of Peppa Pig's owners after finding that the animated children's series Wolfoo infringed copyright in Peppa Pig sound recordings. Expert analysis identified matching audio clips across a representative sample of approximately 30,000 Wolfoo videos, leading to international injunctive relief requiring removal of infringing content and prohibiting future uploads across multiple jurisdictions.

The Supreme Court has confirmed that English courts can determine whether licensing terms offered by patent pools for standard essential patents (SEPs) are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND), even when the pool operator made no FRAND commitment and owns no SEPs. This landmark decision in Tesla v InterDigital opens the door to judicial scrutiny of patent pool rates and raises important questions about how SEP owners and implementers navigate collective licensing arrangements.

The UK Supreme Court has decided that the UK Court has jurisdiction to determine a claim challenging the FRAND rates offered by SEP holders as part of pool or platform joint licensing.

University intellectual property commercialisation presents complex challenges around ownership, protection, and value realisation. This analysis examines how UK universities navigate the journey from academic research to market-ready ventures, exploring spinout formation, licensing strategies, and the critical role of patent protection in life sciences innovation.

The Enlarged Board of Appeal has now issued its decision in G 1/25, the referral regarding amendment of the description when inconsistencies arise after amendment of the claims.

The European Patent Office's Enlarged Board of Appeal has issued a landmark decision in case G 1/25, fundamentally reshaping the requirements for adapting patent descriptions when claims are amended. The ruling establishes a narrow definition of "inconsistency" and rejects the previous practice of demanding wholesale clean-up of descriptions to remove all unclaimed subject-matter. Patent practitioners and applicants now face a more streamlined approach that focuses only on inconsistencies with genuine legal

Scotland's technology start-up ecosystem is experiencing remarkable growth, with new business formation outpacing the rest of the UK. However, converting this entrepreneurial momentum into sustainable, scalable success requires founders to prioritize intellectual property protection from day one, as IP assets increasingly determine investment decisions and long-term competitive advantage.

Imagine an invention machine that is capable of analysing all published human scientific knowledge and then extrapolating forward. If this invention machine were then to publish its own predictions of, say, future materials, hypothetical drug compounds, or improved cell-based therapies, could this prevent future innovations from being patented?

Chemistry start-ups face critical decisions when building patent portfolios that can determine their commercial success. From timing patent applications before public disclosures...

The Court of Appeal has clarified the meaning of "public domain" in non-disclosure agreements, holding that professionally drafted NDAs use this term in its established legal sense to mean information generally accessible to the public. The decision provides crucial guidance on how courts will interpret confidentiality exceptions and what level of disclosure actually strips information of its protected status.