Patents County Court: £500,000 Financial Limit
The recommendation of the Intellectual Property Court Users' Committee that was not implemented on 1 Oct 2010 when the New Patents County Court Rules came into effect was a £500,000 limit to claims. The reason for the late implementation of that proposal is that it had a mixed reception. According to the Committee "Some approved of the Working Group’s proposal. Some thought that there should be a higher limit. Some thought that there should be a limit not on the damages or profits claimed, but on the value of the claim as a whole e.g. by reference to the annual sales, or projected sales, of products protected by the IP right (i.e. total sales made by the right owner, its licensee and/or the alleged infringer). Some thought that there should no limit." Although there was no official limit to the value of a claim that could be brought in the Patents County Court, Judge Birss QC certainly took the value of the claim into account when he transferred Alk-Abello v Meridian M...