Phil & Ted's Most Excellent Buggy Company Ltd v TFK Trends for Kids GmbH & Ors

In assessing patent obviousness, the skilled person is deemed to read prior art properly and with interest. The court need not determine the degree of motivation or commercial interest in pursuing it. The question is whether the steps from the prior art to the invention would have been obvious, assessed without knowledge of the invention.

A prior-art buggy design may be an obvious starting point even if a modification would not serve every proposed purpose. An insert may satisfy requirements for removable adapters where it is made detachable and reversible. Fabric side walls constitute suspension means only where they support the base and perform the required adjustment function. Relative adjustment does not require every base section to be independently adjustable.

The patent concerned an insert for a buggy convertible between seat and cot configurations. Its claim required an articulated base, adapters permitting detachable mounting to a chassis, and suspension means whose length or connecting points effected relative angular adjustment.

The Patents County Court found infringement, rejected invalidity arguments based on Bigo and Bugaboo Frog, but held the patent obvious over Goodbaby, a Chinese utility model describing a convertible seat-and-cot device: [2013] EWPCC 21. TFK appealed, arguing that the judge had wrongly assumed that the skilled person would put Goodbaby into practice and had wrongly treated detachable mounting and fabric suspension as obvious. The central issue was whether an obvious implementation of Goodbaby would fall within the claim.

1. Disposition. The appeal was dismissed. The Court of Appeal upheld the finding that the patent was invalid for obviousness in the light of Goodbaby.
2. Obviousness approach. The structured approach in Pozzoli v BDMO [2007] EWCA Civ 588 was accepted. The crucial question was whether the differences between Goodbaby and the claimed invention would have been obvious to the skilled person without knowledge of the invention. Following Asahi Medical Co Ltd v Macopharma (UK) Ltd [2002] EWCA Civ 466, the skilled person is deemed to read prior art properly and with interest. It is unnecessary to assess whether the person would have been slightly, moderately or particularly interested in pursuing it.
3. Putting Goodbaby into practice. Goodbaby was a reasonable starting point for buggy design because it disclosed a device convertible between seat and cot configurations. The expert evidence supported the conclusion that the skilled person would have been interested in implementing it.
4. Adapters and reversibility. By the priority date, detachable and reversible buggy seats were important aspects of common general knowledge. It was therefore obvious to make the Goodbaby insert removable from a chassis, including to permit the child to face towards or away from the parent. The fact that Goodbaby was not a good starting point for achieving car-seat compatibility did not prevent it being an obvious starting point for reversibility. The trial judge was entitled to attach little weight to the contrary expert evidence.
5. Suspension means. In practice, the skilled person would provide fabric side walls supporting the base and would accommodate the changing geometry with gussets, elasticated material, straps, zips, press studs or equivalent arrangements. Where the fabric performed that supporting function and changed length or connecting points during conversion, it constituted suspension means for the purposes of the claim. The fact that the frame also moved did not prevent the fabric from effecting the required relative angular adjustment.
6. Scope of the adjustment requirement. The claim required relative adjustment of the base sections, not independent adjustment of every section. An arrangement in which only the end sections were adjustable could satisfy the requirement.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) ([2014] EWCA Civ 469): dismissed TFK's appeal and upheld the finding of obviousness.
• Patents County Court ([2013] EWPCC 21): found infringement, rejected the attacks based on Bigo and Bugaboo Frog, but held the patent obvious over Goodbaby.