NIPC Law

Manchester Civil Justice Centre Photo Michaelmazr   Licence CC BY-SA 4.0   S ource Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Since the 1 Oct 2010, intellectual property claims of £500,000 or less that can be tried in no more than 2 days have been eligible to proceed in what was previously the Patents County Court and is now the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court ("IPEC)  (see New Patents County Court Rules   31 Oct 2010). The advantages of litigating in IPEC are that parties know from an early stage precisely when their trial will take place and judgment be delivered and their maximum liability for the other side's costs. The timetable is strictly enforced and the work that has to be done on case preparation is controlled. Shorter Trials Scheme Some of those advantages are now available for claims for more than £500,000 in the Business and Property Courts that have been issued on or after 1 Oct 2015 and can be tried in 4 days or less under a regime known as "the Shor...

The Rolls Building Author Basher Eyre   Licence CC BY-SA 2.0   Source  Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Mellor) Mitsubishi Electric Company and another v Archos SA and others   [2021] EWHC 889 (Pat) (13 April 2021) A FRAND case is essentially a patent infringement claim where the remedy to which a successful claimant would normally be entitled has been modified by agreement.  Mr Justice Birss summarized the principle succinctly at para [83] of his judgment in   Unwired Planet International Ltd v Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd and anothe r [2017] EWHC 711 (Pat) (5 April 2017): "The point of FRAND in standard setting is fairly easy to understand. Standards exist so that different manufacturers can produce equipment which is interoperable with the result that the manufacturers compete with one another. So the phone makers compete in the market for phones and the public can select a phone from any supplier and be sure (for exa...

Author Raysonho Licence CC 1,0     Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Mellor) Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and another v Oneplus Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd and others (FRAND CMC Judgment ) [2021] EWHC 493 (Pat) (4 March 2021) This was an application for an order under Part 18 of the Civil Procedure Rules requiring the 9th to 12th defendants ("the Xiaomi defendants") to answer the claimants; requests for further information of their statement of case.  The claimants had served over 100 requests upon the Xiaomi defendants on 12 Feb 2021 most of which those defendants had offered to answer by 16 March 2021. However, there were 2 requests that they refused to answer on the grounds that they were requests for expert evidence to which the claimants were not entitled until the exchange of experts' reports. At a case management conference before Mr Justice Mellor on 2 March 2021, the claimants applied for an order requiring the 9th to 12th defendants to answer all 100 ...

Basher Eyre /  Junction of Fetter Lane and Rolls Buildings  /  CC BY-SA 2.0 Jane Lambert Chancery Division (Mr Justice Warby)  Duchess of Sussex v Associated Newspapers Ltd (Rev 1) [2020] EWHC 1058 (Ch) (1 May 2020) This was an application by the publisher of the Mail on Sunday  and the Mail Online  to strike out certain allegations contained in the particulars of claim and further information of the Duchess of Sussex  and later the reply  in an action that she has brought against the publisher for copyright infringement, misuse of private information and infringement of her rights under the General Data Protection Regulation .  The complaint arises from the newspaper's publication of a letter from the duchess to her father on 10 Feb 2019. Nature of the Application It is important to understand from the outset that this was a procedural application and that no decision has been made on the merits of the Duchess o...