NIPC Law

The Rolls Building Author Judicial Office Licence CC BY-SA 4. 0   Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Last week I chaired 4 of the 5 daily sessions of Informa's Cambridge IP "Winter School"  and delivered 3 of the talks. The title of the last of those talks (which was also the last talk of the Winter School) was IP Litigation in England and Wale s. I offered that talk because not all the attendees in previous years' summer schools had been legally qualified and many of those who were so qualified were new to IP.  It seemed to me that there was not much point in discussing the complexities of IP litigation without a grounding in the basics. IP litigation differs from other types of civil litigation in many ways.  It has its own rules and practice direction.  Much IP business is conducted in specialist courts and all of the rest are in a specialist list in the Chancery Division.  IP litigation can be particularly expensive which is why threats to br...

This decision of Lord Turnbull in EFH Technologies Ltd. and another v Reytium Technology FZC and another [2010] ScotCS CSOH_143 (29 Oct 2010) highlights differences between the procedures in Scotland for obtaining the equivalent of interim injunctive relief and those of the rest of the United Kingdom. This was an application for an interim interdict (the equivalent of an interim injunction) to restrain the defender (defendant) from manufacturing, distributing or selling a product called NaturAD Shrimp Treat. This is used to prevent freshly caught prawns from turning black and unsightly. The pursuer (claimant) alleged that NaturAD Shrimp Treat was a copy of its own product called Prawnfresh. The pursuer's product had not been patented - though a patent application had been filed in December 2009 several years after Prawnfresh had first been marketed. The pursuer therefore had to rely on the law of confidence - again notwithstanding that the product had been in the stream o...

Despite 300 years of political union and until recently a common legislature there remain striking differences between the laws of Scotland and those of the rest of the UK. Occasionally these come to light. A case that highlights them dramatically came before M Wise QC sitting as a temporary (presumably deputy) judge on Friday. This was the sort of case that still comes before chancery interim applications judges from time to time and before Universal Thermosensors Ltd v Hibben [1992] 1 WLR 840 was commonplace. A high tech company engaged in dimensional control and laser scanning services to the oil and gas industries suspected that one of its former directors had made off with some of its trade secrets. It took steps to recover them. Had the case happened in England the employer might have applied for a search order under CPR Part 25 . In Scotland the equivalent procedure appears to be to petition for the appointment of a silk as a "Commissioner" to search for and take al...