NIPC Law

Jane Lambert   Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, Intellectual Property (Sir Colin Birss, Chancellor) QMC Instruments Ltd v Celtic Terahertz Technology Ltd and others [2025] EWHC 3485 (IPEC) (26 Nov 2025) This was a dispute between two university spin-off companies, which were incorporated to exploit the work of Professor Peter Ade .  Professor Ade carried out research into the far-infrared spectrum first at  Queen Mary College (now Queen Mary University London)  until 2001 and afterwards at Cardiff University . While at Queen Mary, he helped to set up QMC Instruments Ltd.  ("QMCIL") to sell far-infrared detectors and multimesh filters, some of which he had designed.  Some years later, Professor Ade and colleagues who had followed him to Cardiff established Celtic Terahertz Technology Ltd  ("CTT"). QMCIL Queen Mary College sold QMCILto investors in 1991 and warranted that the company was the sole beneficial owner of all the IP relatin...

Rolls Building Author  Boggling2019   Licence  CC BY-SA 4.0   Source  Wikimedia Commins Jane Lambert On 1 Oct 2010, the Patents County Court was overhauled by a new set of rules and practice directions which I discussed in New Patents County Court Rules   on 31 Oct 2010.  One of the main planks of the new rules was that the costs that could be recovered in an action before that court were to be limited to £50,000 for the trial and £25,000 for an account of profits and an inquiry.  The costs for steps in the litigation were also capped by a scale that I mentioned in my article. The Patents County Court was abolished by the Courts and Crime Act 2013 and replaced by the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court ("IPEC") (see Jane Lambert  What does the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court mean for Litigants in the North West?   12 Oct 2013 IP Northwest ). The new court inherited the rules and practices of the Patents County Court including ...

  Jane Lambert Appointed Person (Mr Martin Howe QC) BVG  Group Ltd, v Magee    O-222-20 6 Oct 2020 This was an appeal to the Appointed Person by Mr Peter Magee against the decision of Mr Mark King to declare invalid r egistered design number 4009288  invalid (see BVG Group Ltd. v Magee   O/713/19 22 Nov 2019). The hearing officer held that the design did not satisfy section 1C (1) of the Registered Designs Act 1949 in that its features were dictated solely by the product’s technical function.  Mr Magee appealed against that decision on two grounds: “1.1. The Hearing Officer failed to consider various features of the appearance of the design. He failed to consider whether those features of the appearance of the design had a technical function, and failed to consider whether those features had an appearance that was solely dictated by their technical function.  1.2. Further, having conducted an analysis that led him to conclude that the features of ...