Friday 30 November 2012

Rights of audience in England and Wales: when will the new rules come into force?

Patent attorney David Harris (Barker Brettell LLP, Birmingham, England) notes that the Legal Standards Board has approved the draft changes made by the Intellectual Property Regulation Board (IPReg) to the rules concerning the rights of audience which patent attorneys and trade mark attorneys have before various courts (see the top entry listed here).  He comments:
"As such, most attorneys on either register will have rights of audience for all IP matters in the Patents County Court, rather than patent attorneys only having rights for patents and designs (but not copyright), and trade mark attorneys not having any rights by default, as at present. We also get a handful of mildly interesting ancillary rights". 
But what we all want to know is whether when these new rules might be brought into force. If any reader of this weblog has a clue, will he or she please post the answer below.

1 comment:

Nicholas Fox (Simmons & Simmons) said...

The regulation states that it comes into force on 31 December 2012.

See rule 11

http://www.ipreg.org.uk/document_file/file/IPReg_Regulations_Website.pdf

And this is confirmed in the IPREG notice.