NIPC Law

Woolston Railway Station Artist Robert Sandham Licence CC BY 2,0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (HH Judge Melissa Clarke)  DW Windsor Ltd v Urbis Schreder Lt d [2025] EWHC 563 (IPEC) (14 March 2025) This was a claim by D W Windsor Ltd. ("DWW")  against Urbis Schréder Ltd  ("US") for the infringement of UK patents  GB 2 495 509 ("'509")  and GB 2 495 566 ("'566")  by the marketing and sale of Alinea Anti-Climb illuminated handrail and a counterclaim by US for the revocation of the patents on the grounds of want of novelty and obviousness. Her Honour Judge Melissa Clarke tried the action and counterclaim on 17 and 18 Dec 2024 and handed down her judgment on 14 March 2025 (see  DW Windsor Ltd v Urbis Schreder Ltd  [2025] EWHC 563 (IPEC)).  In para [124] of her judgment, the learned judge found that claims 1, 6 and 8 (as dependent on claim 7 and claim 1) of '509 were valid and cl...

You might think that this would be quite different from that but if you did you'd be wrong.  The decision of Mr Justice Birss (as he now is) in  Lizzanno Partitions (UK) Ltd v Interiors Manufacturing Ltd [2013] EWPCC 12 (11 April 2013) is an object lesson in claim construction. It is also a text book example of the application of the law on novelty, obviousness, insufficiency, added value and infringement which is why I am going to dissect it at some length now and perhaps use it as a case study in my "Introduction to Intellectual Property" talk on the 26 June 2013. The Issues This was a claim by Lizzanno Partitions (UK) Ltd . ( "Lizzanno" )   for a declaration that the product identified in the first diagram did not infringe British patent number  GB 2 432 617  for a gasket ( "the patent" ) and revocation of the patent.    The patentee (whom the judge referred to as "Komfort" ) counterclaimed for injunctive and other re...

In  Medimmune Ltd v Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd and Another [2011] EWHC 1669 (Pat) (05 July 2011), Mr. Justice Arnold dismissed a claim for infringement of    European Patents (UK) numbers. 0,774,511 and 2,055,777 by selling a product called ranibizumab which is used for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration of the eye on the grounds that the patents were invalid for obviousness and that even if the claims relied upon were valid the process used by the defendants to make the product did not infringe.   In  Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd v Medimmune Ltd and Another [2012] EWHC 181 (Pat) (10 Feb 2012) the same judge declared that a supplementary protection certificate granted in respect of European patent number 2,055,777 was invalid not only in the light of his earlier finding but because the certificate was was granted in respect of a product that had not been identified in the wording of the relevant claim as a product deriving ...