NIPC Law

  Jane Lambert Court of Appeal (Lady Justice Nicola Davies and Lords Justices Birss and Arnold)  Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks v Emotional Perception AI Ltd [2024] EWCA Civ 825 (19 July 2024) This was an appeal by the Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks ("the Comptroller") from the decision of Sir Anthony Mann sitting as a judge of the High Court in    Emotional Perception AI Ltd v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2023] [2024] Bus LR 14, [2023] WLR(D) 500, [2023] EWHC 2948 (Ch)) (21 Nov 2023). Sir Anthony had allowed an appeal by Emotional Perceptions AI Ltd ("EPL") against the decision of the hearing officer Phil Thorpe in Re Emotional Perception AI Limited's Application  BL/O/542/22 of 22 June 2022. In that decision, Mr Thorpe upheld the examiner's objection to UK Patent application  GB1904713.3 for a Method of training a neural network to reflect emotional perception and re...

  Jane Lambert Patents Court (HH Judge Hacon)  Safestand Ltd v Weston Homes PLC and others [2023] EWHC 3250 (Pat) (19 Dec 2023) This was a claim by Safestand Limited ("Safestand") against Weston Homes Plc, Weston (Logistics) Limited. and Weston Group Limited ("the Weston companies" or "Weston") for patent and registered design infringement. There was also a counterclaim by Weston for revocation of the patents for obviousness and invalidation of the registered designs for want of unity and/or clarity and/or lack of novelty and/or individual character.  The action and counterclaim came before His Honour Judge Hacon sitting as a judge of the High Court between 8 and 19 June 2023.  He delivered judgment on 19 Dec 2023 (see Safestand Ltd v Weston Homes PLC and others [2023] EWHC 3250.  By para [254] of his judgment, he held that the patents were valid and infringed but the registered designs were invalid. The Patents Safestand's patents were  UK Patent No...

Jane Lambert The phrase, "the right to be forgotten", was coined by the Audiencia Nacional  (the Spanish high court) in its questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU") pursuant to art 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union in Case C‑131/12 Mario Costeja Gonzalez v Google Spain SL and another   [2014] 2 All ER (Comm) 301, [2014] All ER (EC) 717, [2014] 1 QB 1022, [2014] 3 CMLR 50, [2014] ECDR 16, 36 BHRC 589, ECLI:EU:C:2014:317, [2014] EMLR 27, EU:C:2014:317, [2014] 3 WLR 659, [2014] EUECJ C-131/12, [2014] QB 1022. In that case the Audiencia Nacional asked the CJEU "whether Article 2(b) of Directive 95/46 i s to be interpreted as meaning that the activity of a search engine as a provider of content which consists in finding information published or placed on the internet by third parties, indexing it automatically, storing it temporarily and, finally, making it available to internet users according to a p...