NIPC Law

  Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (HH Judge Hacon) easyGroup Ltd v Easyfeetstore OU and others [2026] EWHC 767 (IPEC) (1 April 2026) His Honour Judge Hacon, who tried this claim, described it in para [1] of his judgment in  easyGroup Ltd v Easyfeetstore OU and others [2026] EWHC 767 (IPEC) (1 April 2026) as "the latest in a line of claims brought by the claimant ('easyGroup') against parties trading under a name which begins with the word 'easy'."  he added that the claim was for trade mark infringement and passing off. The Parties The claimant is the owner and licensor of all intellectual property rights relating to the various 'easy' businesses set up by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the best known of which is easyJet. The first defendant ('Easyfeetstore') is an Estonian company which sells orthopaedic and orthotic insoles and related accessories online in several territories including the United Kingdom.  The second defend...

  Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (HH Judge Hacon) Harrison (t/a Rayson Engineering) v Buchanan and anothe r [2025] EWHC 3283 (IPEC) (17 Dec 2025) This was a claim for breach of contract and copyright infringement.  The contract claim was based on the claimant's allegation that the defendants commissioned him to create drawings of components for an electrochemical water conditioner.  The copyright claim was based on the claimant's further allegation that copyright subsisted in those drawings, that he was the first owner of those copyrights and that the defendants had used the drawings without his licence.  The defendants denied that there was a binding agreement and argued that the drawings were not fit for purpose.  The action came on for trial before His Honour Judge Hacon on 21 Nov 2025.  By para [21] of his judgment in Harrison (t/a Rayson Engineering) v Buchanan and Another [2025] EWHC 3283 (IPEC), which he handed down on 17 ...

Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (HH Judge Hacom) J eff Gosling Ltd. v Autochair Ltd,   [2025] EWHC 1687 (IPEC) 8 July 2025 The Parties Jeff Gosling Ltd. ("JGL")  installs a range of boot hoists used to load a wheelchair or scooter into the boot of a saloon car or the rear of a hatchback, van or estate car.  One of those products is known as an  "Apex Assist" hoist . A diagram of that product taken from its fitting instructions appears above.   Autochair Ltd . ("Autochair") also supplies a range of hoists that load and unload wheelchairs, mobility scooters and power chairs from vehicles.  That company is the proprietor of  European Patent No. 2 578 197 B1  (‘the Patent’) for a hoist for loading and unloading an item into and out of the load-carrying space of a vehicle such as the boot of a car.  Declarations of Non-Infringement S.71 of the Patents Act 1977 provides a procedure by which a party who fears that an ...

Author  Brianboru100   Licence  CC BY-SA 3.0   Source  Wikipedia  University of Birmingham Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (HH Judge Hacon)  Ukoumunne v The University of Birmingham and others [2020] EWHC 2927 (IPEC) (4 Nov 2020) This was an application by the University of Birmingham and three of its academics to strike out claims for breach of confidence and breach of contract that had been launched against them by one of their graduate students. These are the causes of action that survived an earlier strikeout application which I discussed in  Copyright - Ukoumunne v The University of Birmingham   on 20 Feb 2020. The claim had been for breach of confidence, breach of contract, copyright infringement, professional negligence, racial harassment, bullying, sex discrimination and loss of earnings.  The claimant had complained that the University's lecturers had plagiarized her work in a book and articles that had...