NIPC Law

The Lincolnshire town of Grantham educated one of the world's greatest scientists and the first woman to be British prime minister (see "Frit" - Merck Sharp Dohme Corp v Teva Pharma BV25 March 2012). It has a magnificent parish church and is home to Chantry Dance Company which is very special to me as you will see from the last video clip in Chantry Dance Company's Sandman and Dream Dance10 May 2014 Terpsichore if you read that far. It has a pub called The Beehive with a real beehive for the pub sign (how's that for imaginative branding). Each Autumn it holds a science and arts festival in honour of Sir Isaac Newton called Gravity Fields (see Gravity Fields Festival - there's much more to Grantham than Mrs T8 Aug 2014 East Midlands IP).

So you might think that the good people of Grantham would be very interested in intellectual property having contributed so much to science, branding and the arts - wouldn't you. Well, you'd be wrong.  When I put toge…

In G-Star Raw CV v Rhodi Ltd and Others [2015] EWHC 216 (Ch) (6 Feb 2015) G-Star Raw sued Rhodi Ltd and five other companies and two directors of those companies for infringing its design rights in the designs of two ranges of jeans by importing into, and distributing in, the UK jeans that the defendants knew to be infringing articles. The defendants challenged the subsistence of design right. They denied copying and any knowledge of the alleged infringements. They counterclaimed for declarations of non-infringement and the recovery of moneys that had been paid to G-Star under a bank guarantee. The two directors also denied any personal liability for any wrongdoing by their companies

The claim and counterclaim came on before Mr Richard Spearman QC sitting as a judge of the High Court. Mr Spearmam gave judgment to the claimant against the first, second, fourth and fifth corporate defendants but dismissed the claims against the third and sixth defendant companies. He also dismissed the…