22. Civil and criminal remedies

This concluding chapter explores the means available to the owner of an intellectual property (IP) right — whether a patent, trade mark, design, or copyright — to obtain redress for infringement. The law's exclusionary effect typically occurs by means of the claimant IP owner obtaining one or more remedies from a court against the defendant(s). Common remedies include injunctions and monetary compensation in the form of damages/accounts of profit. It is crucial to comprehend that the court, when granting remedies, attempts to strike a balance between the IP holder's rights and the principles of free competition. The chapter then considers the contexts in which IP rights are enforced and what remedies are available to a claimant before the full trial occurs, and what remedies are available to a successful claimant after there has been a substantive court ruling on infringement. It also looks at the problem of counterfeiting.

21. Dealings in intellectual property rights

This chapter examines dealings in intellectual property (IP) rights. Given the economic importance of IP rights, it is necessary to understand how IP dealings — or transactions — work. The starting point for considering IP transactions is a simple principle — there is a distinction between being the author/creator of the underlying work, invention, mark, or design and being the owner of the right. For this reason, being the author/creator does not necessarily mean that one will always have the ability to enter into transactions with others concerning the work, design, invention, or mark. Generally, it is owners, or their agents/trustees, who will have the power to engage in IP transactions. There are two basic forms of IP dealings: assignment, and licensing. An assignment involves the outright transfer of ownership from the current owner to the new owner. By contrast, a licence is a mere permission to use the IP right.

20. Designs

This chapter discusses the law on designs. The underlying idea behind the law on designs is that it involves two distinct elements: an article or product and some added ingredient, a design feature, which enhances the appearance of the article. It is the design feature, the added matter, which receives legal protection, not the product itself. The chapter then deals with the five principal means available to protect the appearance of a product: UK registered design; UK unregistered design right; UK copyright; EU registered design; and EU unregistered design. Thus, a designer who wishes to acquire protection for the appearance of an article under UK and/or EU law has several options. To add to the complexity, various aspects of the design can be protected by registered designs, unregistered designs, and copyright. The outcome is that a designer could end up with several different layers of protection.

19. Breach of confidence: Trade secrets and private information

This chapter studies breach of confidence. In the United Kingdom, the area of breach of confidence has traditionally been used to protect ideas and information, including trade secrets. The doctrine of breach of confidence is judge-made law, rooted in equitable principles. In consequence, it has developed in a piecemeal, and sometimes contradictory fashion, so that the rationale for the action has not always been clear. Nevertheless, the law of confidence is broad enough in the United Kingdom to encompass: the common definition of a trade secret (commercial, usually technical information); personal, private information which may also have a commercial value (including information which may be protected under the right to privacy under Art. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)); and information protected by the state. The chapter then looks at the role of trade secrets in intellectual property law and considers the EU Trade Secrets Directive.

16. Ownership of patents

This chapter assesses the ownership of patents. Teams of researchers often work together towards a common goal. This means that there are sometimes disputes about who actually invented the product or process covered by a patent. Resolving these disputes is of significance because under patent law the owner possesses the right to grant licences to make use of the patented invention in exchange for a fee or royalties, and the right to sue for infringement. Before deciding who is entitled to the ownership of an invention it is first necessary to examine what is meant in law by the word ‘inventor’. Having examined the criteria used by the courts to identify an inventor, one must now consider the special statutory rules concerning employee–inventors. Once it has been decided who owns an invention, there is a scheme of compensation for employee–inventors.

14. Defences to trade mark infringement

This chapter looks at the various defences against trade mark infringement and the way in which the courts have interpreted them. A defendant's principal argument will be to deny that there has been any infringing conduct, and/or that what has been done is not within the scope of protection given to the registered mark. There are, however, a number of statutory defences. These defences span from the use of one's own name to a framework outlining the conditions of comparative advertisement and the role of exhaustion of rights as a defence to an action for trade mark infringement, including the ways in which the intellectual property owner can object to the parallel importation of non-European Economic Area (EEA) goods.

13. Infringement and loss of registration of trade marks

This chapter focuses on trade mark infringement, setting out the rights of a trade mark owner to prevent others from making use of any sign which is the same as or similar to the registered mark in the course of trade. A claimant who brings a trade mark infringement action will have to show two things: that an act of infringement has been committed, and that such conduct falls within the scope of protection afforded to the registered mark. Once these two points have been established, the court will normally find in favour of the claimant unless one or more of the counter-arguments raised by the defendant succeeds. A defendant who is sued for trade mark infringement, besides denying that infringement has been made out or raising one of the statutory defences, will usually try to counterclaim that the mark should be revoked or declared invalid.

11. Absolute grounds for refusal of registration

This chapter examines the absolute grounds for refusal of trade marks from registrability, which are found in s. 3 of the Trade Marks Act 1994 (TMA). The chapter lists objections to registrability based on the mark's own characteristics. To be refused registration, the mark should possess some innate quality which prevents registration. For instance, the mark applied for may be descriptive, generic, or it may lack distinctiveness. Marks that go against public policy or marks that are immoral will also be refused protection. The TMA also contains a number of negative objections in contrast to its predecessor, which required an applicant to show that the mark applied for was positively entitled to registration.

4. Infringement of copyright

This chapter focuses on the two types of copyright infringement within the CDPA 1988: primary infringement and secondary infringement. In primary infringement, the defendants are directly involved in copying, performing, and issuing to the public the copyright work, whereas secondary infringement involves people who deal with infringing copies, or facilitate such copying or other activities that are restricted by copyright. Besides this difference that has to do with the scope of rights, there is also difference on the mental element. Unlike primary infringement that does not require knowledge or intention to infringe on the part of the alleged infringer and is hence subject to strict liability, secondary infringement occurs where the defendant knew or had reason to believe that activities in question are wrongful. This is assessed on the basis of an objective test, namely what matters is what a reasonable person would have thought in the relevant circumstances.

17. Patentability

This chapter addresses the criteria for patentability; in other words, the rules patent examiners and courts use to decide if a patent is valid or not. These criteria are also useful in the context of an infringement action, because a defendant may make a counter-claim to revoke the claimant's patent for invalidity on the basis of one of the criteria. The patentability of an invention is defined by Articles 52–57 of the European Patent Convention. The criteria comprise five core elements: three positive and two negative. In terms of the positive requirements, for an invention to be patentable, it must possess novelty; inventive step; sufficiency and support; and industrial applicability. Regarding the negative criteria, the invention must not consist of excluded subject matter, and it must not fall afoul of any of the exceptions to patentability.