Do it by the book: case management and questions for reference

Earlier today in the Patents County Court (PCC) Judge Birss gave judgment in Westwood v Knight [2010] EWPCC 16 -- not so much a case as a case management conference (CMC), the first of its kind under the new PCC procedures which came into force at the beginning of last month. This is a bit of a curiosity and, as the judge explained, was a worthwhile exercise here but not something that was likely to happen on a regular basis. In short the claimant, Dame Vivienne Westwood, was throwing the book at the defendant, an internet trader in fashion goods who doing a poor imitation of a small litigant representing himself. Trade mark and copyright infringement and passing off were alleged (a sample of the alleged infringement appears above) and Westwood applied to invalidate Knight's own trade marks. In response, Knight said that Westwood didn't have any rights, he hadn't infringed them anyway and the judge was biased, rude and arrogant and should be replaced.  If you love litigation, enjoy case management and want to read a textbook approach to it by an enthusiastic new judge with the bit between his teeth, this is just for you.


Exclusive: the IPKat reveals the Court
of Justice's secret formula for tackling
IP references for preliminary rulings
Also earlier today, in the loftier forum of the Chancery Division, Mr Justice Arnold was being asked if he wouldn't mind amending the questions on which he had previously asked the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling in SAS Institute Inc. v World Programming Limited, noted by the IPKat here.  In today's ruling (here), noted by the Kat's learned friend Hugo Cox on the 1709 Blog here, Arnold J said "no" -- it wasn't necessary and would anyway cause delay.  The judge did however say one thing which caused the Kat's whiskers to twitch:
"24 It is fair to say that SAS have identified a small typographical error in question 2 ("interpreting" should read "interpreted"), but in my view this is an obvious error which will not cause any difficulty in the proceedings before the Court of Justice".
No-one should ever underestimate the capacity of the Court of Justice of the European Union to cause difficulties for itself, warns the Kat sternly.
Do it by the book: case management and questions for reference Do it by the book: case management and questions for reference Reviewed by Jeremy on Monday, November 22, 2010 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. Hmmm... An orb with a Maltese cross used as a trade mark for clothing. I wonder whether the Harris Tweed Authority has any views on that?

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Powered by Blogger.