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Showing posts from September, 2017

Another Data Protection Act! "You're joking! Not another one!" - A Short History of Data Protection Legislation in the UK

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Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert The reaction of Brenda from Bristol to Mrs May's announcement of a snap election earlier this year made her an internet star.   There was a similar reaction to the government's introduction of a new Data Protection Bill last week and one can understand why.  Three statutes, one Council regulation and a directive in a little over 30 years for the processing of personal data is quite a lot of legislation - especially for an activity that the United States leaves largely unregulated. The Younger Report  Towards the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, concern was expressed in a number of countries about the power of computers to gather, collate and disseminate personal information. In the UK, such concerns were referred to a committee chaired by Sir Kenneth Younger  that had been appointed to consider privacy.  In its report - the Younger Committee Report on Privacy 1972 (Cmnd 5012) - the committee found no...

Trade Marks and Passing off - Coreix Ltd v Coretx Holdings Plc and Others

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Author BigRiz Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3,0 Unported Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court     Coreix Ltd v Coretx Holdings Plc and others   [ 2017] EWHC 1695 (IPEC) Mr Recorder Campbell QC This was a claim for trade mark infringement and passing off and an application for the cancellation of CORETX as a UK trade mark. The action was brought by Coreix Ltd . ( "Coreix" ) which was the registered proprietor of the word mark  COREIX . The defendants are members of a group of companies that include the word  CORETX  in their corporate names, have registered CORETX sign as a word mark and supply ICT services under that mark as well as a device mark that includes the word CORETX The Facts The third defendant was incorporated in 2004 under the name CONNEXIONS4LONDON LTD. It traded under the mark C4L in relation to telecommunication and computer services. From Nov 2013, it st...

When it comes to the Crunch: CRUNCH MORTGAGES and bad faith

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The IPO in Newport - where the hearing officers are to be found Crown Copyright Licensed by the IPO Jane Lambert An exception to the rule that a trade mark registration cannot be challenged for non-use in the first 5 years after registration is where the application to register the trade mark was made in "bad faith". The legislative mechanism is provided by s.47 (1) of the Trade Marks Act 1994: "The registration of a trade mark may be declared invalid on the ground that the trade mark was registered in breach of section 3 or any of the provisions referred to in that section (absolute grounds for refusal of registration)." Subsection (6) of s.3 provides: "A trade mark shall not be registered if or to the extent that the application is made in bad faith." But what does "bad faith" mean exactly? In  Hotel Cipriani SRL and Others v Cipriani (Grosvenor Street) Ltd and others   [2009] Bus LR D81, [2008] EWHC 3032 (Ch), [2...

Database Rights and Copyright: Technomed v Bluecrest Health Screening

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Jane Lambert High Court, Chancery Division,  Technomed Ltd and Another v Bluecrest Health Screening Ltd and Another    [2017] EWHC 2142 (Ch) (24 Aug 2017)  Coram David Stone  sitting as a judge of the High Court This was an action for infringement of database right and copyright in an electrocardiogram ("ECG") analysis and reporting system known as ECG Cloud. The System The claimants, Technomed Ltd. and Technomed Telemedicine Ltd. , had developed the system. The companies supply ECG equipment and use the ECG Cloud to analyse ECG readings and report the results to doctors or health screening companies such as the first defendant Bluecrest Health Screening Ltd . ( "Bluecrest" ). Mr Stone, who tried the action, described the operation of the system as follows at para [26] of his judgment: "the process of using ECG Cloud starts with a mobile ECG machine which takes a reading from a patient. The patient data are then...