IP litigators: you are hereby consulted!

Are you an IP litigator in search of something to read? Have you any personal experience of the CIPA Higher Courts Qualification Regulations or the ITMA Trade Mark Litigator and Trade Mark Advocate Certificate Regulations that you're bursting to share? If so, the Intellectual Property Regulation Board (IPReg) Consultation on Replacement of the CIPA Higher Courts Qualification Regulations and the ITMA Trade Mark Litigator and Trade Mark Advocate Certificate Regulations may be just what you're looking for.

If you want to respond to the consultation document, you can email IPReg Chief Executive Ann Wright here. The consultation closes on 17 October 2011 after which the respective professional regulatory boards  will
consider responses, prepare a draft regulation and then issue a further consultation so that interested parties can comment on the wording of the draft regulation before it is finalised and submitted to the Legal Services Board for approval.

If you don't want to respond, read this document anyway.  It's short (15 sides, inclusive of the bits you don't need to read), well-written and devoid of the unnecessary artwork and acreage of white space that seems to accompany so many print-out-and-read documents emanating from the public sector. It also contains a useful potted history of IP litigation and representation over the past couple of decades or so.

Is it worth being an IP attorney litigator?

Writing in the current issue of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (2010) 5(8):602-607 (JIPLP), fellow blogger David Musker (Jenkins; Class 99 blogmeister) has an article ("IP Attorney Litigators: will they fly or die?") on the viability of patent attorney litigators in the United Kingdom. David's abstract runs like this:

"Legal context: The Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 opened the way for bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) and the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys (ITMA) to certify litigators licensed to act in competition with solicitors in England and Wales. There are currently almost 100 such attorney litigators in the UK

Key points: The author makes use of comparative and demographic data to study the profiles of attorney litigators, including routes to certification, seniority by years post-qualification, gender. He explores comparisons with other UK hybrid legal professionals such as licensed conveyancers.

Practical significance: UK solicitors are at no risk from other professions within the UK. Even any competitive price pressure in UK IP litigation is far more likely to be intra-professional, from rival firms, rather than inter-professional. Regardless though of whether the CIPA and ITMA certification schemes ultimately live up to the competitive aims of the 1990 legislation, they are certainly capable of meeting more modest goals of "upskilling" the IP attorney".

If you are thinking of adding this qualification to your range of existing skills and talents, it's worth reading this article first. It has some interesting statistics too.