High Court: Intellectual Property Enterprise Court judgments, 2019

In assessing inventive step, the skilled person is deemed to consider each item of prior art carefully, regardless of whether it appears a promising starting…

Copyright infringement involving indirect copying requires a sequential analysis. The court must first identify what was copied and decide whether the…

For an unregistered Community design to receive protection, the first disclosure event must take place within the territory of the Community. It is…

A signed commercial document may record an agreed commercial consensus without creating legal relations. The court determines that question objectively…

Transfer from IPEC to the Patents Court depends on the interests of justice, assessed by reference to the parties’ resources, the value and complexity of the…

For inventive step, a skilled person may recognise a useful technical idea within a disclosure even where other aspects are impractical or of no interest. The…

In a low-value trade mark claim alleging counterfeit goods, the court applies the balance of probabilities while keeping evidential requirements proportionate…

For infringement under section 10(3) of the Trade Marks Act 1994, a link between the later sign and an earlier mark does not itself establish unfair advantage.…

Applications to restrain solicitors from acting because they possess confidential information require a fact-sensitive and proportionate assessment. Where the…

A contractual obligation to maintain a database does not impose service levels which the contract does not specify. Where a contract requires each registration…

Under section 39 of the Patents Act 1977, an employee’s invention belongs to the employee unless it was made in the course of the statutory categories of…

Re-litigating the substance of a claim previously struck out for deliberate non-compliance with a peremptory order will ordinarily constitute an abuse of…

Copyright infringement may be established where substantial similarity and a sufficient possibility of access give rise to a strong prima facie inference of…

In a passing off claim, the question is whether the defendant’s sign is likely to lead a substantial number of people to believe that the defendant’s business…

For secondary infringement under section 23 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, “reason to believe” requires more than facts from which a person…

In a patent-entitlement dispute, the court must first identify the inventive concept and then determine who devised it. The inquiry is directed to the…

A purchaser may disassemble trade-marked goods and resell genuine components, but exhaustion does not prevent the proprietor opposing further commercialisation…

A patent claim is construed by identifying the ordinary meaning of its integers in the context of the specification. A claimed locking member requiring…

The registration of a company name containing a distinctive and well-known mark may itself constitute a misrepresentation for passing-off. A descriptive…

Patent claims are construed by the ordinary principles of construction, read through the eyes of the skilled person with the common general knowledge in mind.…

Use of a sign by a non-profit NHS foundation trust may constitute use in the course of trade. The relevant question is whether the use forms part of commercial…

A mark is not descriptively invalid merely because it alludes indirectly to a characteristic of the goods. Section 3(1)(c) of the Trade Marks Act 1994 applies…