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R (Greyhound Board of Great Britain Ltd) v Welsh Ministers [2026] EWHC 670 (Admin) What are the practical implications of this case? The ruling reinforces the constitutional divide between the courts and the legislature. It explains that the scheme and framework of the Government of Wales Act 2006 (GWA 2006) embody that separation of powers, and that any judicial attempt to recognise and enforce a common law obligation on Welsh Ministers to consult prior to introducing legislation in the Senedd would trespass upon that boundary. This is not a departure from established principle; case law has already upheld comparable rules for lawmakers in Scotland and at Westminster. However, this is the first express confirmation of the position for Welsh lawmakers, and the first time this dimension of the GWA 2006 has been analysed in such depth. The court examined earlier
The solution arrived through the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), a quasi‑judicial body handling mass claims, created under UN Security Council Resolution 687. By addressing environmental harm—most notably via its ‘F4’ claim class—the UNCC set a seminal benchmark shaping how international law and contemporary arbitral panels allocate financial responsibility for wartime ecological devastation. With present-day wars in areas such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East bringing dam breaches, strikes on chemical facilities, and the burning of farmland, the UNCC’s legacy endures as an essential reference point for states, global investors, and companies engaged in post‑conflict arbitration. The F4 claims: Quantifying the unquantifiable Prior to the 1990s, mechanisms in international law for war reparations overwhelmingly favoured property loss, foregone earnings, and bodily injury. The natural world was commonly treated as a mute, non-compensable victim of armed hostilities...
Understanding the farming business as a business Many farms still use long-standing structures that arose by habit, not strategy. Sole traders, informal partnerships and outdated partnership deeds are common. While once effective, such setups can cause major issues around succession, tax planning and involving the next generation. A corporate team can take a fresh, business-led view of the farm, asking: Who owns the land and other critical assets? Who manages daily operations? Who carries the risk and who enjoys the return? What is the enduring plan for succession? From this review, the team can confirm whether the current setup is fit for purpose or if an alternative — for example an updated partnership agreement, a company, a limited liability partnership, or a blended model — would better meet the family’s aims. Tax efficiency through joined-up advice Tax sits at the centre of most
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Athleta ( ITM) Inc v Sports Group Denmark A/ S and another [2024] EWHC 2449 ( Ch) What are the practical implications of this case? The ruling underlines a key principle: to rely on use of a trade mark displayed on non- UK websites, those sites must actively target UK consumers. Merely despatching goods bearing the marks into the UK via those websites is insufficient. The decision further demonstrates that, even where word marks are assessed as highly similar and the relevant goods/services are identical or similar, a likelihood of confusion may still be absent where the marks possess only a low level of distinctiveness. Conversely, infringement was established where the more distinctive device elements in one of the claimant’s marks and one of the defendant’s marks were also found to be similar. Overall, marks with a low degree of...
Consequences regarding design requirements Wherever packaging is required, it should be conceived, manufactured and commercialised so that it enables re-use or high-quality recycling, while minimising environmental impact across its entire life-cycle and the life cycle of the goods it was created to contain. This approach gives manufacturers room to innovate in packaging design and to set their products apart through the application of such innovation. In turn, these novel packaging designs ought to be properly safeguarded through appropriate intellectual property protection, which may include: Patents covering an inventive packaging format or an inventive packaging process; Trade marks protecting the distinctive get-up of the product; Registered designs safeguarding the visual appearance of new product packaging. By aligning design, production and commercialisation with re-use and high-quality recycling, businesses can both lessen environmental impacts over the full life-cycle and leverage innovative packaging as a...
Easy Group Ltd v Easyfundraising Ltd and others [2024] EWHC 2323 ( Ch) What are the practical implications of this case? Family of marks A registered trade mark forming part of a wider family can enjoy increased distinctiveness, especially where uniform visual elements are deployed across that stable. Consistent presentation of colour scheme, typeface and scale reinforces recognition within the family of marks. Accordingly, brand owners should implement their brand guidelines without deviation when extending their trade mark portfolios, with the aim of fostering a strong, unified visual character. Delay in issuing proceedings When evaluating the head of damage to repute under a section 10(3) claim, the court is prepared to draw adverse inferences from any slowness by a claimant in taking enforcement steps. Here, the claimant had known of EFL’s supposed infringing conduct for a decade—said to erode the...
What are the practical implications of this case? The Court of Justice’s forthcoming judgment is poised to materially affect how EU Member States recognise works of applied art from non‑ EU jurisdictions under the EU’s harmonised copyright rules. If AG Szpunar’s reasoning is endorsed, EU copyright protection would extend to designers based outside the Union who place their creations on the EU market. Such a judgment could create a landmark for the treatment of international copyright within the EU, encouraging more uniform standards of protection across Member States and shaping practice worldwide. By setting out firmer guidance on safeguarding foreign works, the ruling could foster greater certainty and fairness in copyright enforcement. That, in turn, would support both creators and companies and help build a more coherent global copyright architecture. As current EU rules arguably leave the cross‑border reach of...
In this issue: Patents Copyright & associated rights Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Patents Xiaomi wins appeal against Panasonic for SEP interim licence ( Panasonic Holdings Corp v Xiaomi Technology UK Ltd) Panasonic Holdings Corp v Xiaomi Technology UK Ltd [2024] EWCA Civ 1143 concerned an appeal brought by the Appellants ( Xiaomi) challenging a High Court judgment refusing them an interim licence over the Respondent's ( Panasonic) standard-essential patents ( SEPs) relating to 3G and 4G telecommunications equipment. Both parties had agreed to enter into a global licence for those SEPs on terms to be assessed as fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory ( FRAND) by the Patents Court, with that decision expected in December 2024 or January 2025. The appeal was ultimately successful for Xiaomi......
Kompaktwerk GMBH (a company incorporated under German law) v Liveperson Netherlands BV (a company incorporated under Dutch law) [2024] EWHC 2278 ( Comm) What are the practical implications of this case? Kompaktwerk v Live Person is the first judicial foray into whether the Saa S model can sit within the ‘sale of goods’ category. Historically, English law has not treated computer software as ‘goods’; however, after the Court of Justice decision in The Software Incubator v Computer Associates ( Case C410/19), it remained a live issue how English law would characterise software—and, in particular, how it would address the now‑dominant Saa S model. The court determined that a time‑bound subscription to Saa S is not a ‘sale’ and does not concern ‘goods’, a conclusion with broad reach. Although the ruling concerned the Commercial Agents ( Council Directive) Regulations 1993, SI 1993/3053 (...
Illiquidx Ltd v Altana Wealth Ltd and others [2024] EWHC 2191 ( Ch) What are the practical implications of this case? This ruling underscores for all practitioners the need to pin down, with accuracy, the precise scope of the 'confidential information' their client wishes to shield. It contains takeaways for both transactional and disputes lawyers: from settling the language of a non-disclosure agreement ( NDA) to setting out, with particularity, the confidential material in issue and the ways said material is alleged to have been misused. Pitching an over expansive tranche of information as 'confidential' risks a strike-out for abuse of process. By contrast, failing to identify the relevant categories of 'confidential' information at the start, then attempting to widen those categories mid-proceedings, will almost certainly attract robust opposition from a defendant. Here, the claimant was criticised for a succession of amendments since...
TVIS Ltd v Howserv Services Ltd and other companies [2024] EWCA Civ 1103 What are the practical implications of this case? While the Court of Appeal seldom overturns trade mark infringement decisions, the outcome here is hardly surprising; it is unusual for a claimant to marshal so many instances of at least arguable actual confusion, and aspects of the judge’s conclusions were difficult to reconcile. More notable for practitioners, however, are Arnold LJ’s narrow stance on descriptiveness (considered further below) and his account of why the principle in Reed Executive Plc v Reed Business Information Ltd [2004] EWCA Civ 159 did not apply. The frequently invoked Reed v Reed principle indicates that, where a mark is largely descriptive, relatively small distinctions may suffice to dispel confusion. This follows because the average consumer anticipates that others will also use descriptive signs and,...
In this issue: Copyright & associated rights Patents Designs Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Latest Q& A Useful information Copyright & associated rights AI copyright dispute proposal to be put forward in 2024, UK minister says MLex: Artificial intelligence ( AI) developers and copyright owners should see the government’s plan to break the deadlock over using protected works to train AI by the end of the year, the UK’s Parliamentary Under- Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Feryal Clark, said. She underlined that whether this arrives via legislation or by amending policy remains to be determined, yet she still anticipated a resolution in the very near future, by the end of this year. See: AI copyright dispute proposal to be put forward in 2024, UK...
Motorola Mobility LLC and another v Ericsson Ltd and another [2024] EWCA Civ 1100 What are the practical implications of this case? Practitioners and industry participants engaged in negotiating SEP licences will note the relationship between FRAND licensing undertakings and the discretionary remedy of an interim injunction. The court offered helpful observations likely to matter in forthcoming FRAND contests: when assessing whether to grant injunctive relief for infringement of a UK patent, loss arising from a party’s pursuit of overseas patent rights through injunctive measures was not something to weigh, as expressly stated by the court in this decision for clarity......
Addressing the Times Tech Summit on 1 October 2024, Feryal Clark underlined that the route—be it new legislation or a change to existing policy—has not yet been determined, though she anticipated a conclusion in the coming weeks, by year-end, in the very near future. She added that both are vital to the UK economy, so the issue must be settled; it has persisted far longer than it should for all parties concerned......
Considered a pioneering ruling, on 27 September 2024 the Court held that Laion — a non-profit assembling datasets for AI training, also for commercial ends — may invoke the text- and data-mining exception in Germany’s implementation of Directive ( EU) 2019/790 (the EU Copyright Directive) when scraping images protected by copyright. The central question between the parties was whether Laion, as defendant, could lawfully download and copy photographer Robert Kneschke’s protected image to build an AI training dataset. Laion releases a dataset for third parties to train their systems on, while it does not train any AI itself. It offers approximately 5.85 billion image-to-text pairs to AI image generators, a resource used for commercial activity. The proceedings were closely watched by developers of generative AI, as this is regarded as the first EU case to address the lawfulness of image scraping and later use...
A number of record companies, among them Warner, Sony Music and Atlantic Records, have brought actions against Suno and Udio, issuing two lawsuits that accuse generative AI of producing ‘convincing imitations’ of existing tracks. Pre-action correspondence indicates that, as with other US disputes over generative AI, the companies’ core defence will rest on the claim that any copying amounted to fair use. How Suno and Udio allegedly hit the wrong note The claims assert that Suno (which has a deal to feature within Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot) and Udio ingest vast numbers of recordings, then refine and standardise them for use as training data, before extracting parameters from that dataset to build their AI models. When a user supplies a text prompt (for example, make a jazz song about New York), the service outputs one or more...
Modernatx, Inc v Pfizer Ltd and other companies; Pfizer Inc and another company v Modernatx, Inc [2024] EWHC 1695 ( Pat) Note that the issues concerning Moderna’s undertaking not to enforce its patents were separated into their own proceedings at a case management conference. That question was determined in a distinct High Court judgment by Judge Jonathan Richards, also delivered on 2 July 2024, which found that Pfizer and Bio NTech cannot rely on Moderna’s pandemic-era non-enforcement pledge to avoid the consequences of any infringement. For additional detail on both matters and the background, see Practice Note: Life sciences cases tracker— UK. See also Law360 News Analysis: Pfizer, Bio NTech infringed Moderna’s m RNA vaccine patent. The connected case citation is Pfizer Inc v Modernatx, Inc; Modernatx, Inc v Pfizer Ltd [2024] EWHC 1648 ( Pat). What are the practical...
In this issue: Trade marks/passing off General IP Lex Talk®IP: a Lexis®Nexis community Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Trade marks/passing off IPO gathers research and reports on IP enforcement and infringement. The Intellectual Property Office has unveiled a webpage assembling research publications and reports on enforcing and breaching IP rights, with themes including social media influencers, online copyright infringement and counterfeit goods. See: LNB News 27/09/2024 13. INTERPOL announces the 17th International Law Enforcement IP Crime Conference, ‘ Fighting IP Crime: A global responsibility’, to be held in Curaçao. The event aims to strengthen worldwide partnerships, co-ordinate action against IP crime, and inform effective enforcement strategies. See: LNB News 26/09/2024 19. General IP Government halts commencement of new assimilated law court...
Lenovo Group Ltd and others v Inter Digital Technology Corporation and others [2024] EWHC 596 ( Ch) What are the practical implications of this case? Practitioners and industry participants involved in negotiating SEP licences will note this ruling, as it tackles (i) the practical concerns that arise once a court-set FRAND licence expires, including issues after the term ends, and (ii) the new issue of whether the English courts—one of the very few court systems prepared to fix global FRAND terms—will state the terms of an ‘interim’ FRAND licence......
In this issue: Trade marks/passing off General IP Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Trade marks/passing off AG examines scope of General Court’s jurisdiction in assessing facts ( EUIPO v Neoperl) The Advocate General in EUIPO v Neoperl ( AG opinion), Case C‑93/23 P, considered whether the General Court had overreached its power to vary decisions by re‑assessing the facts and by addressing and determining a point that was not part of the contested decision. The opinion also looks at the appeal‑filter mechanism, designed to cut the volume of appeals so that only those liable to have a meaningful effect beyond the specific dispute continue. It confirms that a weighty point of law was engaged: the breadth of the General Court’s jurisdiction to alter a decision. Written by Helene...
Retired High Court Master Paul Teverson directed Trinitas Gaming Ltd, together with two of its directors, to post on its website that it had admitted infringing Alchemy Bet Ltd’s copyright in parts of its source code used to create games competing with Slingo. He refused Alchemy Bet’s bid for an order that some of its legal costs be recovered on the indemnity basis (which would relieve Alchemy Bet of proving proportionality), remarking that the court must act with considerable caution. Alchemy Bet’s barrister, Georgina Messenger of Three New Square, had pressed Master Teverson to compel Trinitas to announce the outcome, maintaining that such publicity was reasonable and proportionate. Messenger further contended that Trinitas ought to meet her client’s legal costs on the indemnity basis, asserting that Trinitas might have acknowledged its copyright infringement earlier in the case to save......
Easygroup Ltd v Easy Live ( Services) Ltd and others [2024] EWHC 2282 ( Ch) What are the practical implications of this case? The practical impact of this ruling centres on whether a likelihood of confusion arises even where the signs are similar and the services are identical or akin. Here, the outcome hinged on the notion that the notional average consumer, on encountering a trader using a sign including the word ‘easy’, would not automatically suppose that another trader using a sign with the same word is linked to the first. This is because such a consumer would not believe that any one business could claim a monopoly over all marks that incorporate the descriptive term ‘easy’. In this dispute, the further elements present in each sign, when combined with the conceptual distinctions between the marks, were enough to allow consumers to...
EUIPO v Neoperl AG ( AG opinion) Case C‑93/23 P What are the practical implications of this case? The Advocate General’s opinion clarifies the limits on how far the General Court may modify a decision of the EUIPO Board of Appeal. The General Court ought not to reach findings on facts that the earlier tribunal has not examined and determined, as doing so would strip that body of its function. In practical terms, parties should contest General Court judgments where they contain rulings on points that were not decided in the appealed case. The opinion reviews the appeal filtering mechanism and explains why this appeal was permitted to proceed. The conditions to be satisfied are stringent, and appeals progress only where they raise an issue of significance for the unity, consistency or development of EU law. The present appeal invites the Court of Justice to...
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When evaluating a general damages claim, the practitioner ought initially to refer to the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG)...
This Practice Note This Practice Note reviews mechanisms used in settling litigation. A Tomlin order consists of a consent order paired with a schedule. It operates to stay proceedings on terms that have been agreed. The provisions contained in the schedule may remain confidential. This Practice Note describes the scope of confidentiality attaching to the schedule and sets out how it differs from a standard consent order. Sample wording for a Tomlin order is included, alongside links to precedents, as well as guidance on court approval. It also addresses varying, setting aside and enforcing a Tomlin order, including the considerations the court will take into account when handling applications for each. Further guidance is provided on interpreting and applying the relevant provisions of the CPR; however, some courts and divisions impose very specific requirements for both drafting and approval, and for approaching the schedule and confidentiality issues. Accordingly, you must consider the particular rules and court guide provisions in the forum where your claim is proceeding when drawing up the Tomlin order...
Date [ date ] Parties [ name of Landlord ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Landlord) [ name of Tenant ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Tenant) [ [ name of Guarantor ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Guarantor) ] [ [ name of Mortgagee ] [ of OR incorporated in England and Wales (company registration number [ number ]) with its registered office at ] [ address ] (Mortgagee) ] Definitions Within this Deed, the terms below shall be interpreted as follows: [ Annual Rent • the annual sum reserved under the Lease; ] [ Insurance Rent • the Tenant’s share of the Landlord’s costs of insuring the Property (as set out in the Lease); ] Lease • the lease of the Property dated [ date ], entered into between (1) [ the Landlord OR [ name ...
I, [ name ], of [ address ], solemnly and sincerely state that: [ Matters to be verified, set out in numbered paragraphs ] I make this solemn statement in good conscience, believing it to be true, and pursuant to the provisions of the Statutory Declarations Act 1835. DECLARED at [ details ] this [ day ] day of [ month and year ] Before me ................................................................................ [ signature of the person before whom the declaration is made ] A [ commissioner for oaths OR [ solicitor OR [ insert other qualification ] ] authorised to administer oaths ]...
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