G was responsible for the establishment and maintenance of a standard form contract for the international trading of coal and coal derivatives (SCoTA) and related trading platform, data and indices. G’s product licensing agreement (PLA) for traders and brokers prohibited licensees from transacting with unlicensed third parties. L argued that G was not entitled to control absolutely the use of the SCoTA contract and its associated products but only to control the use of its IP rights in those pro ...
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LG’s appeal was dismissed, the appointed person finding that the hearing officer had been entitled to refuse to register the trade mark INTELLIGENT SENSOR for goods in class 9 including television sets and mobile phones. The case was a borderline one, and whilst another hearing officer might have found the mark vague enough not to be objectionable under s.3(1)(c), it was open to the hearing officer in this case to take the view that the mark would be seen as describing a characteristic of the go ...
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An action for relief in respect of unjustified threats of trade mark infringement proceedings failed because the threats were made as part of a negotiating process and fell within the without prejudice rule, even though the letter was not expressly marked “without prejudice”. Obiter the threats provisions in the TMA 1994 referred only to proceedings for infringement in the UK courts and not to proceedings in any foreign court. However the letter, had it not fallen within the ‘without prejudice’ ...
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An appeal was dismissed against a hearing officer’s decision to refuse N’s application for the revocation of R’s patent relating to sandwich cartons. Not every slip in the application of the Pozzoli structured approach to obviousness opened the decision to an attack based on error of principle, and the hearing officer had been entitled to reject the arguments as to lack of inventive step.
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An appeal was dismissed against the grant of a declaration of non-infringement in relation to a patent concerning intravascular devices used principally for the occlusion of blood vessels. The judge had been right to construe the patent as limited to a device that had clamps at both ends and as requiring the clamps to be the primary and effective means of securing the loose ends.
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In the context of an appeal against the refusal of five applications for supplementary protection certificates, relating to a patent claiming a method of making acellular vaccine compositions against whooping cough, the court referred to the ECJ a number of questions for a preliminary ruling. The questions related to the interpretation of Regulation 1768/92 art.3 where the product was a combined vaccine against several diseases and the basic patent in force protected one of the vaccine aspects.
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C’s appeal, against a decision that its patent for an artificial heart valve was invalid for obviousness, was dismissed.
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E’s appeal, against a decision that C’s heart valve device did not infringe E’s patent, was dismissed. The basic theme of the patent was to put a valve onto a known type of stent, which was cylindrical. E’s arguments put too great a strain on the word ‘cylindrical’ and amounted to striking it out altogether, and this could not be justified. The judge had been right to find that C’s device, which was not uniform in cross section but was bulbous at one end, was outside the claims of the patent.
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Following a ruling of the ECJ the Court of Appeal decided, with some reluctance, that it was bound to hold the defendants liable for trade mark infringement arising from their advertising methods. The defendants sold perfumes which each smelt somewhat like a luxury branded perfume known by a registered trade mark, and they published comparison lists identifying which well-known branded perfume each smell-alike product corresponded to. The ECJ had indicated that, because the defendants’ comparati ...
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Quia timet proceedings for passing off were successful, where the defendant’s prototype vacuum cleaner, which was exhibited at a trade show, bore a strong resemblance, by reason of its shape alone, to the claimant’s well-known Henry vacuum cleaner. The replica lacked the Henry’s smiley face and name and appeared in blue rather than red, however the overall shape and in particular the shiny black ‘bowler hat’ were sufficient to create a damaging misrepresentation in the minds of a substantial pro ...
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