NIPC Law

Alcatel-Lucent SA's Head Office in Boulogne-Bilancourt Author AnaBé   Licence CC BY-SA 3.0   Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Court of Appeal (Lords Justices Newey, Arnold and Snowden)  Alcatel Lucent SAS v Amazon Digital UK Ltd and other s [2025] EWCA Civ 43 (28 Jan 2025) This was the second of three cases in which the Court of Appeal had to consider whether a willing licensor of a portfolio of patents declared essential to one or more standards (" standard-essential patents" or "SEPs" ) would grant an implementer of those standards who has undertaken to take a licence to that portfolio on the terms to be determined by the Patents Court to be fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") an interim licence pending that determination.  The other cases were  Panasonic Holdings Corporation v Xiaomi Technology UK Ltd and others [2024] EWCA Civ 1143 (3 Oct 2024) which I discussed in  FRAND - Panasonic Holdings Corporation v Xiaomi Technology UK ...

Author Evan-Amos   Licence Public Domain   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Business and Property Courts , Intellectual Property List (chD) (Mr Justice Zacaroli PQ Systems Europe Ltd and another v Aughton and another [2023] EWHC 581 (Pat) This was an action for copyright infringement and breach of confidence. The claimants were two software houses, one English and the other American, which were at the relevant time owned by the same shareholder.  The English company was PQ Systems Europe Ltd ("PQSE") and the American one was Productivity-Quality Systems Inc.   The first defendant was one Jeff Aughton ("Mr Aughton"). He had been an employee and director of PQSE  The second defendant was a company owned by the first defendant and his wife called Factoria Ltd.  The Claimants' Software The claimants accused Mr Aughton of copying their software.  That software was statistical process control ("SPC") and gauge management software. SPC ...

Authors Ben Sutherland   Beyond My Ken   Licence CC BY-SA 2.0 Source Wikimedia Commons     Jane Lambert Chancery Division (Mr Justice Zacaroli) Smith v Dryden and others [2021] EWHC 2277 (11 Aug 2021) This was a claim by Kelly-Marie Smith against Kesi Dryden and others for copyright infringement. The claimant wrote the words and music for a song called Can You Tell Me .  She claimed that copyright subsisted in those works and that those copyrights had been infringed by the performance, recording and publication of the song Waiting All Night.  The song had been written by James Newman and recorded by the band Rudimental .  The action came on for trial before Mr Justice Zacaroli between 20 and 26 July 2021. At para [86] of his judgment in Smith v Dryden and others [2021] EWHC 2277, the learned judge dismissed the claim. The judge referred to s.1 (1) and s.3 (1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 . He also cited para [33] of Judg...