NIPC Law

Royal Courts of Justice Author Aurelian Guichard   Licence CC BY-SA Deed   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (Recorder Michaels )  Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society Ltd and another v Made Television Ltd and others [2024] EWHC 405 (IPEC) (29 Feb 2024) This was an application by the defendants to a debt recovery and copyright infringement claim for permission to file and serve an Amended Defence and Counterclaim. The claimants offered to consent to amendments to the Defence but not to the launch of a counterclaim.  The application was heard by Recorder Michaels at a case management conference on 21 Feb 2024.  The recorder handed down her judgment on 29 Feb 2024. The claimants referred the recorder to CPR 17.1 (2) (b) , CPR 20.4 (2) (b ) and paras [40] to [42] of Lady Justice Asplin's judgment in Elite Property Holdings Ltd and Another v Barclays Bank Plc [2019] EWCA Civ 2212: "[40] …it is important to bear ...

In  John Kaldor Fabricmaker UK Ltd v Lee Ann Fashions Ltd .  [2014] EWHC 3779 (IPEC) (21 Nov 2014) Judge Hacon had to decide whether the fabric used to make the dress in the bottom photo was a copy of the fabric in the top one. The Facts Some time before the beginning of Aug 2012 Lee Ann Fashions Ltd. ( "Lee Ann" ) received the following design brief from Marks & Spencer: " Print Direction  More primitive wood blocking prints, bold batiks, multi-stripes and tribal prints. Often these are anchored with stone and Black with highlights of the colour pops of the collection" On 2 Aug 2012 employees from Lee Ann met a sales executive of John Kaldor Fabricmaker UK Ltd ( "Kaldor" ) . Lee Ann invited Kaldor to supply samples of its materials so that Kaldor could bid for Marks & Spencer's order. Kaldor supplied 22 samples including 4 metres of the fabric in Annex 1. Lee Ann offered to supply Marks & Spencer dresses made from that fabric. T...

Can a monkey own copyright? Clearly not. At least not in England in at any rate for two reasons. First, a photograph is an artistic work (see s.4 (1) (a) of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 ( "CDPA" ))  and s.1 (1) (a) makes clear that copyright subsists in an artistic work only if it is original. Now the threshold for originality is very high but it does connote independent skill and labour which goes beyond monkeying around with a smart phone button. Even if the monkeying is done by a human being. Indeed even if it is done by a photographer. The other reason is that s.1 (3) provides that "Copyright does not subsist in a work unless the requirements of this Part with respect to qualification for copyright protection are met (see section 153 and the provisions referred to there)." Well those qualifications relate to nationality, residence and incorporation. Monkeys just don;t meet any of those criteria. What about the camera...

In our very first NIPC newsletter which we published in June 1997 I wrote a case note on Mr. Justice Lloyd's decision in  Creation Records Ltd. and Others v News Group Newspapers Ltd   [1997] EMLR 444, [1997] EWHC Ch 370, (1997) 16 Tr LR 544. In that case Mr. Noel Gallagher of Oasis and others applied for an interlocutory injunction to restrain The Sun from offering for sale and selling a poster of Oasis that featured a photo of an elaborate set that included a white Rolls Royce in a country club swimming pool. The Sun's photograph was very similar to the photograph that appeared on an Oasis album cover. The similarity arose because The Sun's photographer shot the same scene at roughly the same time and from the same angle as Mr. Gallagher's photographer but he did not reproduce any part of Oasis's print or negative. The learned judge held that the plaintiffs had no arguable case for infringement of copyright though he accepted that they had an arguable case for br...