High Court: Intellectual Property Enterprise Court judgments, 2014

In an inquiry into damages for infringement of registered and unregistered design rights, loss must be caused by the infringement. A claimant seeking lost…

UK unregistered design right may protect a specifically identified design embodied in the whole or part of an article. A pleading that lists significant…

Copyright infringement in a design requires proof of copying and copying of the whole work or a substantial part. Similarities may support a prima facie…

Copyright infringement may occur where a website is targeted at the UK, even though it is also targeted at another country. Targeting is a multi-factorial…

User-principle damages are compensatory. The court assesses the sum that reasonable parties would have negotiated for permission to carry out the infringing…

Damages for infringement of intellectual property rights remain compensatory. A claimant may recover the reasonable royalty that would have been agreed for a…

A descriptive educational name may support passing off only if it has acquired a secondary meaning identifying the claimant’s services to the relevant public.…

In an account of profits for patent infringement, the defendant is accountable only for profits legally caused by the infringement. The court must assess the…

Patent claims must be construed by giving effect to their language and limitations. The word “toy” limited the claims to products of a scale that a child might…

In an account of profits for unregistered design-right infringement, the court may adopt a broad-brush assessment where the evidence does not permit precise…

In an inquiry as to damages, the claimant must prove loss, but damages may be assessed broadly where exact quantification is impossible. The court must…

Failure to comply with directions for costs submissions or election of an inquiry may justify striking out the outstanding claim where the breach is serious…

Where parties settle pleaded trade mark infringement proceedings, the settlement generally concludes claims falling within the pleaded case. It does not…

In an inquiry into damages for groundless patent threats, compensation is assessed to place the claimant in the position it would have occupied absent the…

An implied contractual term must reflect what the agreement, read objectively and in context, would reasonably be understood to mean. The court must adopt a…

In an inquiry into damages for infringement of unregistered design right, recovery is not limited to losses relating to products protected by the infringed…

Under the Brussels I Regulation, jurisdiction over a cross-border dispute is distinct from the internal allocation of proceedings between domestic tribunals. A…

On a summary-judgment application, the court must decide whether the defence has a realistic prospect of success, without conducting a mini-trial. The court…

Passing off requires the classic trinity of goodwill, a material misrepresentation and damage. Misrepresentation means an assumption by the relevant public of…

Relief from a judgment in default requires a defendant to satisfy the conditions in Civil Procedure Rules 1998, CPR 13.3. The defendant must show a real…

For invalidity under art 3(1)(c) of the Trade Mark Directive, the question is whether the average consumer would immediately perceive the sign, without further…

For inventive step, the skilled person may differ according to the task being performed. Obviousness through the eyes of either a person drawn from the prior…

In an issue-based costs assessment, the overall winner is ordinarily entitled to its general costs, subject to adjustment for issues on which it lost. Any…

In the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, the transitional costs regime applies by reference to the claim form commencing the relevant claim. An…

Liability for infringement or passing off is not established merely because a publisher or website provider uses a claimant’s mark in advertising a defendant’s…

A claim may be an abuse of process where the maximum recoverable benefit is plainly disproportionate to the court resources required to determine it. There is…

A communication constitutes a threat of patent infringement proceedings where a reasonable recipient, considering the communication as a whole and the relevant…

Service at an individual’s last known residence may be effective even without actual receipt. The relevant knowledge is actual or constructive knowledge…

In the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, the disclosure-report provisions in CPR rule 31.5 do not apply. Although IPEC claims are generally multi-track…

A de facto directorship is determined by considering all relevant circumstances. There is no single decisive test. Important factors include whether the…

In the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, costs must reflect both the successful party’s entitlement to recover reasonable costs and the objective of…