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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 Sole traders, informal partnerships and outdated partnership deeds are common.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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In this issue: Trade marks/passing off Copyright & associated rights Patents AI and 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 Express yourself— High Court rules on conflict between freedom of expression and intellectual property right infringement ( Fridriksson v Samherji Hf) This dispute concerned a bid for permission to appeal against a summary judgment order made by Master Teverson in the claimant’s favour, restraining the defendant from passing off, copyright infringement and publishing malicious falsehoods. The defendant contended his conduct amounted to artistic expression, relying upon the earlier decision of Nadia Plesner Joensen v Louis Vuitton Malletier SA [2011] ECDR 14 (not reported by Lexis Nexis®), where the defendant’s freedom of expression was held to override the...
The High Court found that lead vocalist and bass player Conrad Lant and drummer Anthony Bray both owned copyright in artistic works that the 1980s band used to sell its music and appeared to have infringed each other's rights with merchandise sales. High Court Recorder Amanda Michaels said there was no indication that Mr. Lant permitted the defendants to exploit his copyright works, nor that Mr. Bray granted Mr. Lant permission to use his own creations. Lant and Bray both played in Venom from 1979 to 1986. Afterwards, Bray licensed Plastic Head Music Distribution Ltd to market merchandise featuring identified artistic works, while Lant licensed Razmataz.com Ltd to carry out similar sales, with each musician challenging the other’s licensing moves, according to the judgment. The singer says he created six artistic works; Plastic Head countered that Bray authored and owned them, or...
Fridriksson v Samherji Hf [2025] EWHC 1873 ( Ch) What are the practical implications of the case? This judgment offers useful direction on the outer limits of conduct that can be acknowledged as freedom of expression, the court’s approach to weighing competing provisions under the European Convention on Human Rights (the ‘ Convention’), and the circumstances in which freedom of expression may operate as a defence to alleged intellectual property right infringement. On the summary judgment application, the defendant contended that there should be no boundary to what counts as freedom of expression, encompassing his actions here. The Master held that where rights collide they must be measured by their respective importance in the specific context of the clash. In these circumstances, the Master concluded that the defendant’s invocation of Article 10 of the Convention to resist the transfer of the domain name and the...
In this issue: Patents Trade marks/passing off Copyright & associated rights IP and technology Confidential Information Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Patents UPC hands down first UK-covering injunction in Kodak dispute. Law360, London: The Unified Patent Court ( UPC) has exercised its broad reach by granting an unprecedented injunction spanning Britain, blocking Kodak from selling printing plates that infringe the UK designation of Fujifilm’s European patent. See: UPC issues first injunction covering UK in Kodak case. Astellas defeats bid by generics to overturn cancer drug patent. Law360: In Accord Healthcare Ltd v The Regents of the University of California [2025] EWCA Civ 936, on 23 July 2025, attempts by generic manufacturers to persuade a London appellate judge to lift the remaining...
The three-justice panel held in one decision that auction platform Easy Live ( Services) Ltd had infringed easy Group's 'easylife' marks after reviving a stylised version alongside 'easy.com' in another ruling concerning a platform called Easy Fundraising. Yet the appellate court concluded Easy Fundraising had not infringed any marks. In the Easy Fundraising decision, Lord Justice Arnold noted: ' None of the variants altered the distinctive character of the easylife stylised mark'. Easy Group had challenged a September 2024 decision that tossed out its trade mark infringement claims against the online auction house. It likewise appealed a comparable ruling from that month concerning Easy Fundraising, after the judge set aside its 'easylife' and 'easy.com' marks and curtailed the services that 'easy Jet' could cover......
The Court of Appeal affirmed a decision dismissing assertions by Accord Healthcare, Sandoz and Teva that chemists would have deemed it 'immediately obvious' to create Astellas' patented cancer therapy, enzalutamide, because the expert evidence failed to explain why a particular atomic group would have been selected by chemists. The Xtandi patent is held by the University of California and is licensed on an exclusive basis to Astellas Pharma Inc. Writing for a panel of three justices in November 2024, Judge Richard Arnold said the judge was entitled to treat that omission as relevant when evaluating the expert’s evidence. The generics contended that a poster and presentation slides had disclosed a molecule akin to Astellas' claimed enzalutamide. According to the Court of Appeal judgment, they argued that the irresistible conclusion was that the patented invention was obvious. The claimed compound is...
The UPC’s Court of First Instance imposed an injunction on three Eastman Kodak Company subsidiaries on 25 July 2025 under the UK Patents Act 1977, supplementing an order that Fujifilm Corp had also secured covering Germany. In February 2025, in BSH Hausgeräte Gmb H v Electrolux AB ( Case C-339/22), the Court of Justice expressly confirmed, as noted by the Mannheim Local Division, that the UPC is competent to hear patent infringement actions involving patents granted outside the EU. As there is no case currently pending in the UK concerning the alleged infringement or the validity of the patent-in-suit in the UK, there is therefore no justification to suspend the proceedings at this......
The Commission has issued its ‘ Guidelines on the scope of obligations for general‑purpose AI models’. Though not legally binding, they explain how the Commission reads and applies Regulation ( EU) 2024/1689 (the EU AI Act), which will underpin its enforcement practice and thus offer significant practical clarity. They succeed a prior draft circulated in April 2025 for consultation (see: LNB News 18/07/2025 40 and LNB News 22/04/2025 37). The final text concentrates on four central and closely linked themes: defining GPAI models, what counts as a provider placing a GPAI model on the market, the open‑source exemptions to the obligations for GPAI models, and certain considerations on the enforcement of the GPAI model framework. What is a GPAI model? The guidelines set out three key elements about GPAI models: an indicative benchmark for when a model qualifies as a GPAI model, how the...
Wise Payments Ltd (formerly Transferwise Ltd) v With Wise Ltd and others [2025] EWHC 1722 ( IPEC) What are the practical implications of this case? The central question concerns the onus on parties bringing or defending an invalidity claim premised on an absence of a bona fide intention to use the trade mark for some or all goods/services listed in the specification. The presumption is one of good faith. Therefore, a challenger must rebut that presumption to succeed. The evidential record must grapple with concrete facts that either directly overturn the presumption, or from which a court can properly infer facts that do so. In short, proof must target the intention to use at the relevant time. Typically, this entails a careful review of the proprietor’s business as at the filing date, together with the reasonably foreseeable or natural directions in which that business might expand....
What are the practical implications of this case? The Court of Appeal’s ruling has significant practical consequences for IP enforcement in AI model training, and more generally for the conduct of litigation. Above all, it emphasises the need for precision in pleadings. The court confirmed that claimants must set out, at the earliest stage, every element of their case with clarity. In this dispute, Getty did not exercise the requisite care when advancing its reputational harm claims. Attempts to introduce fresh allegations or further evidence during later phases of the trial can properly be refused, irrespective of apparent relevance or seriousness. For AI technology developers, this ruling—and the proceedings as a whole—serve as a clear warning about the legal risks linked to large‑scale data scraping, and the use of copyright‑protected and trade marked material for model training......
Huk- Coburg Haftplicht- Unterstützungs- Kasse Kraftfahrender Beamter Deutschlands A. G. In Coburg v Check24 Vergleichsportal GMBH and others, Case C-697/23, ECLI: EU: C:2025:338 What are the practical implications of this case? The Court of Justice’s strict formalism in construing the notions of ‘competitor’ and ‘comparative advertising’ within Article 2(c) of Directive 2006/114/ EC can be regarded as pulling against core aims of permissible ‘comparative advertising’: enabling an objective presentation of the merits of comparable products and invigorating competition between suppliers for consumers’ benefit (recital 6), while guarding against misleading comparative advertising (see, for example, recitals 2, 3, 7 and 8 of Directive 2006/114/ EC). When Directive 2006/114/ EC took effect, online comparison service platforms like Check24 were not common in the market, and typically only the provider promoted its own products. Yet, from the consumer’s viewpoint, such comparison platforms perform the very same role as...
In this issue: Patents Copyright & associated rights Trade marks/passing off IP and technology Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Patents Astra Zeneca loses bid to revive patent for diabetes drug Law360, London: On 16 July 2025, the Court of Appeal ( Civil Division) declined to restore Astra Zeneca’s IP protection for its billion‑dollar diabetes product dapagliflozin, paving the way for generic competition to enter the market. In Generics ( UK) Ltd v Astrazeneca Ab [2025] EWCA Civ 903, the Court of Appeal affirmed the High Court’s conclusion that European Patent ( UK) No 1 506 211 is invalid. The judges determined the patent did not plausibly show that dapagliflozin inhibits the sodium‑dependent glucose co‑transporter protein SGLT2 with sufficient efficacy to treat diabetes, leading to invalidity for lack of inventive step and insufficiency of disclosure. The court also found the patent to be an...
Emotional Perception AI Ltd seeks to promote a so-called ' Frankenstein test' that merges the European Patent Office's ( EPO) endorsed approach, intended purely to excise certain patentability exclusions obstructing protection for its invention, counsel for the UK Intellectual Property Office ( UKIPO) told the court on 22 July 2025. Describing it as 'a recipe for disaster', Brian Nicholson KC, acting for the comptroller-general of patents, said on 22 July 2025 that almost every patent case would then have to decipher a new standard from the sheet his learned friend handed round. Emotional Perception aims to obtain a patent for an artificial neural network, or ANN, which offers media recommendations by reference to the 'physical' properties of another song or image, as part of its bid to secure patent protection ultimately......
The conclusive edition of the General- Purpose AI ( GPAI) Code of Practice appeared on 10 July 2025. It succeeds three prior drafts, issued in November 2024, December 2024, and March 2025. Pending scrutiny and validation by the European Commission and Member States, the 10 July text is treated as definitive in advance of the GPAI provisions of Regulation ( EU) 2024/1689 (the EU AI Act) taking effect on 2 August 2025. Commission guidance clarifying key notions linked to GPAI models, released on 18 July 2025, sits alongside the Code of Practice as an accompaniment. This Code is a voluntary instrument, supported by the EU AI Office and produced by a consortium of academics and industry participants, intended to assist GPAI model providers in fulfilling the corresponding obligations of the EU AI Act (see: LNB News 18/07/2025 40, LNB News...
High Court ruling on the ‘ Notting Hill Shopping Bag’ trade mark The High Court concluded that a competitor trading on Portobello Road had not come up with tote bag wording independently, yet Natasha Courtenay- Smith was unable to pursue infringement because exclusive rights in the ‘ Notting Hill Shopping Bag’ lapsed in 2023 when the company that held them was voluntarily wound up. Judge Francesca Kaye explained that the Crown had not been asked to renew the trade mark, had neither sought renewal itself nor authorised any other party to do so, and had not disposed of or vested the mark in anyone before it expired. Consequently, there was no trade mark capable of being revested or restored to the company when a restoration order was later granted. The decision records that Courtenay- Smith incorporated The Notting Hill Shopping Bag Co Ltd in 2010 and,...
A cohort of members within NDP Nieuwsmedia, the national trade association representing 95% of the Dutch commercial news sector, will voluntarily pool together their editorial content so they can bargain together collectively with AI developers. The consortium has concluded its first licensing deal with GPT- NL, an open, publicly funded large language model. GPT- NL already holds an agreement with the Dutch judiciary to......
On 18 July 2025, the Commission issued administrative guidance on the EU AI Act’s rules for GPAI models, designed to clarify scope, core concepts and how these interact with a related code of practice. The guidance sets out key legal terms to map the reach of the EU AI Act’s global partnership and artificial intelligence ( GPAI) regime and pinpoint which businesses must comply. An initial draft was released in April 2025 to gather views from stakeholders. Following that consultation, the Commission’s AI Office outlined the principal revisions to EU Member States at a European AI Board meeting in late June 2025. The GPAI provisions will apply from 2 August 2025... Definition of GPAI models The guidance introduces a quantitative test to determine whether a model qualifies as a GPAI model—and is therefore within the AI Act’s remit—based on the computing power used for...
A three-judge panel affirmed the conclusions of Michael Tappin KC, who sat as a deputy High Court judge, dismissing Astra Zeneca’s attempt to overturn his ruling that its dapagliflozin patent added nothing beyond an earlier international patent application. Justice Richard Arnold, writing for the court, said specialists reading Astra Zeneca’s claims would have a ‘legitimate reason to doubt’ that dapagliflozin would serve as an effective therapy for diabetes. The row centres on Astra Zeneca’s patent for the dapagliflozin molecule, which lapsed in May 2023. Astra Zeneca had obtained supplementary protection certificates for the compound, due to run until May 2028. A number of generic manufacturers — including Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Europe Ltd and Generics ( UK) Ltd — petitioned the High Court to revoke the patent and, by extension, the supplementary protections, seeking to pave the way to market their own...
Both organisations said the amended claim introduced fresh and additional accusations and widened the overall breadth of the authors’ case and claims, and Open AI contended that whereas the authors had previously asserted only that infringement arose from their works being fed into Open AI’s large language model, they now contend that Chat GPT’s outputs also ground infringement. In a motion to dismiss dated 14 July 2025, Open AI said the authors’ theory had ‘radically changed’ and that they had walked back earlier statements to the court indicating a primary focus on the input side of the process. ‘ Plaintiffs allege that even outputs comprising “summaries” of text “are themselves derivative works, ineluctably based on original unlawful copied work”,’ the filing stated. ‘ But the accusations concerning outputs effectively stop there. The complaint does not attach or even quote a single sentence from any...
In this issue: Copyright & associated rights Trade marks/passing off Patents Designs General IP Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Latest Q& As Useful information Copyright & associated rights AI developers see final iteration of EU code of practice, but key questions remain MLex notes that Open AI, Microsoft, Google and other leading AI firms have received the published final text of the EU AI Act’s Code of Practice for general-purpose models. Yet the guidelines and a data disclosure template are still outstanding, leaving doubt over whether providers will commit before the full package is available. The European Commission is also informally weighing a grace period to ease early compliance, though how long this would last remains unconfirmed. Late amendments made it into the closing draft, with mixed...
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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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