NIPC Law

Author Skip88   Licence Public Domain Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Patents Court (Nicholas Caddick KC)  Price and others v Flitcraft Ltd and others [2022] EWHC 3381 (Pat) (20 Dec 2022) This was an action for patent and copyright infringement and passing off.  The patents in suit were GB2415714C  and GB2436989B.  The first claimant, Philip Price ("Mr Price"), claimed to own the patents. He contended that he had assigned the patents to one Fred Bridge ("Mr Bridge") shortly before he was adjudged bankrupt and that Mr Bridge had reassigned them back to him upon his discharge from bankruptcy.   The second claimant, Supawall Ltd. ("Supawall") claimed to be Mr Price's exclusive licensee.  Mr Price and Supawall alleged that the first and second defendants, Flitcraft Ltd ("Flitcraft") and Flitcraft Timber Frame Ltd., had infringed the patents by marketing and supplying a product known as "Injectawall". The third and fourth ...

WIPO Head Office, Geneva  Author Emmanuel Berrod Licence  CC BY-SA 4.0   Source Flickr Jane Lambert This is the first of a series of articles on domain name disputes. Schemes for the rapid resolution of domain name disputes such as ICANN's  UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ), Nominet's Dispute Resolution Service ( "DRS" ) and the Czech Court of Arbitration's ".euADR"  are probably the most successful use of alternative dispute resolution ( "ADR" ) on the planet and the topic is important for that reason alone. It is also important because such schemes are probably indispensable for the rapid development of the Internet.  It is inconceivable that businesses would have invested anything that the that they have on the development of on-line platforms for the delivery of many sorts of services without a quick and cheap method of domain name dispute resolution. My Qualifications and Experience I have been int...

Every year at the end of October the World Intellectual Property Organization ( "WIPO" ) , the UN agency for intellectual property holds a one day conference at its head office in Geneva for its domain name dispute resolution panellists . I have been a member of that panel for the last 10 years and I have attended every panellists' meeting since 2005. I have got to know quite a few of my fellow panellists over the years and several of them have become good friends. This year the conference took place on the 28 Oct. In previous years the focus had been on practical issues arising under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ( "UDRP" )  such as how to deal with privacy services and what constitutes evidence of registration and use in bad faith. There was some of that this year.   Andrew Lothian  of Demys Ltd  presented an analysis of the decisions where the domain name comprised the trade marks of more than one entity such as Dr. Ing. h...

An interesting little domain name case that is curious in several respects: first, that it was brought in the courts at all rather than before an administrative panel appointed by one of the UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy) dispute resolution service providers ; secondly, that it was brought in England when none of the parties appears to have anything to do with England, thirdly, that it was brought in the Technology and Construction Court which is part of the Queen’s Bench Division rather than the Chancery Division or even the Patents County Court; and fourthly, the claimant’s cause of action. The Facts In Lifestyle Management Ltd. v Frater [2010] EWHC 3258 (TCC) (10 Dec 2010) the claimants were companies registered in Kenya and the British Virgin Islands while the defendant was in Scotland. The claimants have a website at www.offshorelsm.com which indicates that they provide services “for the international investor and the professional expatriate”. Their tradi...

On 12 Oct 2009 I attended the 10th anniversary conference of the UDRP at WIPO in Geneva. I did not post anything about it at the time because I was expected that there would be a good summary of the proceedings on the WIPO website. That has happened. If anybody wants to read it he or she will find it here. A conference usually takes place at that time of the year for domain name panellists, but the papers read there are never published. This conference was an exception because it was open to the public. The full programme and all the presentations together with a video address from Francis Gurry, WIPO's Director-General, can be downloaded from "WIPO Conference: 10 Years of the UDRP - What Next?" There were some really lively debates to which I contributed. My main point was on what seems to me to be a dilution of the notion of "bad faith" for the purposes of para. 4 (a) (iii) of the Policy and paragraph 15 (e) of the Rules on reverse domain name hijacking. ...

There is a tantalizingly brief report of a decision by Nominet panellist Bob Elliott in a domain name dispute brought by the  Sutton Borough Liberal Democrats  against the Carshalton and Wallington Constituency Labour Party (see   Sutton Borough Liberal Democrats v Carshalton & Wallington Constituency Labour Party [2008] DRS 6026 (26 September 2008) . The poor old respondents don't seem to have a website of their own, poor things, and even if they did how much traffic would it get nowadays.    So just as their Chancellor took his lead from Vince Cable when looking for a solution to Northern Rock the Carshalton and Wallington CLP registered suttonlibdems.org.uk as a domain name.   Very understandable since they came a poor third in the last general election: Turnout: 43061 (64%) 40.3%   Liberal Democrat: 17357 (−4.7%) 37.8%   Conservative: 16289 (+4%) 17.2%   Labour: 7396 (−1.2%) .... and their electoral prospects have not exactly soared since then despite the heroic efforts of...