NIPC Law

Author Jules Gagnage   Licence CC BY-SA 3.0   Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Patents Court (Sir Anthony Mann) Fiberweb Geosynthetics Ltd v Geofabrics Ltd [2021] EWHC 1996 (Pat) (16 July 2021) Everyone is familiar with interim injunctions.  These are orders to do or, more likely, refrain from doing something until trial or further order.  They are intended to protect an intellectual property or other rights owner from irreparable harm between the issue of proceedings and trial.  They are awarded in exchange for a promise by the person seeking the injunction to pay damages to the injuncted party should the court subsequently decide that the injunction should never have been granted. But what about the opposite case where a party that is already subject to an injunction wants to make or sell a product that may or may not infringe an intellectual property right for which a final injunction has been granted and thus breach such injunction pending the trial...

  Jane Lambert Court of Appeal ( Lord Justices Lewison and Arnold and Sir Nicholas Patten) Geofabrics Ltd v Fiberweb Geosynthetics Ltd (Rev 1) [2021] EWCA Civ 854 (11 June 2021) In  Geofabrics Ltd v Fiberweb Geosynthetics Ltd [2020] EWHC 444 (Pat) (5 March 2020) which I discussed in  Patents - Geofabrics Ltd v Fiberweb Geosynthetics Ltd.   on 12 March 2020, Mr David Stone, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court, held that Geofabrics Ltd.'s    European patent (UK) 2 430 238 for a "trackbed liner and related methods " was valid and infringed by the defendant company, Fiberwed Geosynthetics Ltd.  Fiberweb applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal against Mr Stone's judgment. Lord Justice Floyd allowed Fiberweb to appeal on the grounds that (1) the deputy judge had erred in his construction of claim 1 of the Patent, and as a result, had wrongly found that  Fiberweb's Hydrotex 2.0 product ("Hydrotex") fell within the scope of the c...

Jane Lambert Patents Court (David Stone) Geofabrics Ltd v Fiberweb Geosynthetics Ltd [2020] EWHC 444 (Pat) (5 March 2020) This was an action for patent infringement with a counterclaim  for revocation on grounds of anticipation, obviousness and insufficiency, Mr  David Stone , who tried the action and counterclaim, remarked at paragraph [4] of his judgment: "No new points of law were raised. This is therefore a case which turns entirely on its facts." The did not prevent the distinguished US intellectual property scholar, Prof. Dennis Crouch, from referring to the judgment as a "UK Patent Law Primer" in his excellent blog Patentlyo  (see Dennis Crouch  UK Patent Law Primer: Reading through Judge Stone’s New Opinion   9 March 2020 Patentlyo), Patent in Suit The patent in suit was European patent (UK) 2 430 238 for a "trackbed liner and related methods ". A trackbed is the foundation upon which a railway track is laid. In the ...