NIPC Law

Manchester Civil Justice Centre Author Skip88  Licence Public Domain Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Court of Appeal (Lords Justices Lewison, Phillips and Snowdon) Cheshire Estate & Legal Ltd. v Blanchfield and others [2024] EWCA Civ 1317 (5 Nov 2024) This was an appeal from the judgment of His Honour Judge Bever sitting in Manchester as a judge of the High Court. The learned judge had dismissed with costs a claim by Cheshire Estate & Legal Ltd. ("Cheshire Estate") against two of its former directors and the company that they were setting up for conspiracy and breach of fiduciary, contractual and confidential duties. The Alleged Wrongdoing The defendants were accused of taking preliminary steps to set up a competing enterprise before they had resigned as Cheshire Estate's directors. Those steps included registering the trading name of the new business, incorporating the company as the corporate vehicle for their venture, appointing themselves as directors ...

Junction of Fetter Lane and Rolls Building Author Basher Eyre Licence Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic Source Wikipedia Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (Mr David Stone)  MEI Fields Designs Ltd v Saffron Cards and Gifts Ltd and another [2018] EWHC 1332 (IPEC) (6 June 2018) This was an action for the infringement of copyright with a counterclaim for a declaration of non-infringement.  The copyrights in question subsisted in artwork for greetings cards that had been created by Mel Fields ( "Mrs Fields" ). The  main issue in this case was over who owned those copyrights rather than whether they had been infringed. Indeed, Mr David Stone, the deputy judge who tried the action and counterclaim remarked at para [19] of his judgment:  "unusually for a copyright case, I was never actually taken to the allegedly infringing cards at issue in these proceedings." The Facts Mrs Fields worked as des...

Victoria Plums Author Rasbak Source Wikipedia Creative Commons Licence Victoria Plum Ltd (t/a Victoria Plumb) v Victorian Plumbing Ltd and Others [2016] EWHC 2911 (Ch) (18 Nov 2016)  Mr Justice Henry Carr In this case, Victoria Plum Ltd . had registered the words VICTORIA PLUMB as a UK trade mark in relation to a range of goods and services in classes 11, 20 and 35 under trade mark number 3,066,332. The specified services include: "the bringing together, for the benefit of others, of…[bathroom items]… enabling customers to conveniently view and purchase those goods… via a website." The question before Mr Justice Henry Carr was whether that trade mark was infringed by a process known as pay-per-click bidding. Pay-Per-Click Bidding Just about everyone who has ever used the internet will be familiar with Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Whenever a user wants to search the internet he or she enters search terms that the user thinks...