High Court: Intellectual Property Enterprise Court judgments, 2018

A party cannot maintain a claim for procuring breach of contract based on its own breach of the contract. The claimant in such an action must be a party to the…

Trade mark infringement under section 10(2) is assessed globally, through the eyes of the relevant average consumer and at the date the defendant’s use…

Patent claims are construed in the context of the specification as a whole. A general term such as “catheter” is not confined to one type without a strong…

Where a party’s conduct amounts to an abuse of the court’s process, CPR 45.30(2)(a) requires the IPEC scale costs scheme to be disapplied. The court is not…

Damages for trade mark infringement and passing off are compensatory, not punitive. The claimant bears the burden of proving loss, but damages may be assessed…

Where parties settle trade mark opposition proceedings, withdrawal of the proceedings and the avoidance of further costs and time may constitute consideration…

Extended passing off may protect goodwill associated with a clearly defined type of service or organisation, as well as a product. The claimant must show that…

Copyright ownership by an employee is a multifactorial assessment. Relevant considerations include the employment terms, where and when the work was created…

A party who signs a clear contractual document after having sufficient opportunity to read and understand it cannot ordinarily rescind it on the basis of an…

Passing off protects goodwill, not a monopoly in an unregistered name. Goodwill may attach to a name without associated get-up, but misrepresentation must be…

For trade mark identity, insignificant differences such as spacing may be disregarded where they would go unnoticed by the average consumer. Likelihood of…

Summary judgment may determine a short point of law or construction where the court has the evidence necessary for proper determination and the parties have…

For infringement under art.9(2)(b), confusion caused by similarities in non-descriptive elements remains relevant even where a mark has some descriptive…

For trade mark infringement on an online marketplace, the seller uses signs displayed on a product listing where the marketplace enables the seller’s…