The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys held its annual congress on October 01, and October 02, 2009 at the SAS Radisson Hotel in Portman Square London.

CIPA Congress

The subject of this years CIPA congress was "The IP system under attack". Plenary sessions, and workshops were on topics as follows:

  • How well is the EPO doing?
  • Raising the Bar – on standards of examination and inventive step at the EPO.
  • Employee Inventor Compensation.
  • Cost Effective Litigation – is it possible?
  • Workshop 1 – Patents v Open Source Software, Conflict or Co-existence.
  • Workshop 2 – Design Case Law
  • Workshop 3 – Patents v Competition Law
  • Workshop 4 – AdWords and Key Words.

Robert Franks of Franks & Co sat on the panel in the plenary session concerning cost effective litigation, along with Patents County Court Judge Mr Justice Richard Arnold, and solicitor David Barron of Wragge & Co (Chairman).

The Intellectual Property Administrators Group (IPAG) conference ran in parallel with congress and covered topics including forthcoming PCT changes for 2010, US patent law updates, electronic filing, community trade marks and designs, due diligence, recordal of assignments and latest developments in domain name registration.


Article Published October 2nd, 2009