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What does the Court of Appeal's decision in Unwired Planet [2018] EWCA Civ 2344 mean for standard essential patent litigation and the English Courts as a jurisdiction for FRAND disputes? Readers can recap on the Court of Appeal's judgment here .   On Tuesday evening, the UK Group of AIPPI held a Rapid Response seminar on the Court of Appeal's decision, lead by Professor Sir Robin Jacob (UCL) and Richard Vary (Bird & Bird).  Kat friend Zoe Fuller (Bird & Bird) was on hand to bring details of this informative and entertaining discussion to IPKat readers - over to Zoe to relay the evening's discussion: A FRAND licence - a global creature like the IPKat The Judgment  The three points on appeal were as follows: 1. Is a FRAND licence global or national? Patent licences and patent portfolios are very often global. It may be impractical for a patent owner to seek to negotiate a licence of its patent rights, or commence litigation, country by country. The Court...

Since the landmark UK Supreme Court decision in Actavis v Eli Lilly ( [2017] UKSC 48 ), judges of the lower courts have voiced the need for clarification from the Supreme Court.  In a Court of Appeal decision published recently, Icescape v Ice-World ( [2018] EWCA Civ 2219 ),  Lord Kitchin, who has been recently elevated to the Supreme Court,  applies the principles of Actavis . This Kat looks to see if there are any hints in this decision as to how Lord Kitchin may approach the unresolved issues raised by Actavis in the Supreme Court. The Invention - Cooling apparatus for mobile ice rinks The case at issue was whether Ice-World's patent for a mobile ice rink cooling member  EP (UK) 1462755 ,  was valid and infringed by Icescape. Mobile ice rinks are formed from an arrangement of manifolds and longitudinal pipes . Coolant pumped through  the pipes freezes surrounding water to form the skating surface.  The apparatus of pipes and manifolds ha...

The Court of Appeal bats around global FRAND rates Following this morning's Court of Appeal hand down, patent litigators across the UK and further afield have been analyzing the judgment in Unwired Planet v Huawei [2018] EWCA Civ 2344 .   The AmeriKat was only able to briefly summarize the findings, so had to rely on her friends at Bird & Bird (sounds like dinner to the AmeriKat...) in the form of Jane Mutimear and Richard Vary who expand on the Court of Appeal's findings as follows: "The Court of Appeal handed down judgment in the Unwired Planet v Huawei appeal this morning (23 October 2018).   The bench consisted of Lord Justice Kitchin (now Lord Kitchin since his elevation last month to the Supreme Court), Lord Justice Floyd and Lady Justice Asplin. They handed down a 291 paragraph, 66 page judgment dealing with Huawei's appeal and Unwired Planet's cross-appeal against Birss J's findings Huawei would be subject to an injunction in the UK unless they...

How surprised were you about the Court of Appeal's decision? For those of you who haven't been eagerly awaiting today's decision from the Court of Appeal in the Unwired Planet v Huawei appeal , let the AmeriKat surprise you with this bit of news - the Court of Appeal has upheld Birss J's decision  from last April.  In dismissing all three grounds of appeal, the Court of Appeal in Unwired Planet v Huawei [2018] EWCA Civ 2344    (with Lord Kitchin giving the lead judgment) held that: 1 .   Birss J was entitled to find that, in all the circumstances, only a global licence would be FRAND (see [129]). 2.   Huawei's appeal on the non-discriminatory element of FRAND failed.  Huawei argued that the licence offered to them did not meet the ND criteria because the global royalty rate offered to them was much higher than that contained in global licence granted to Samsung, but the Court of Appeal held that the offer was non-discriminatory (see [207]); 3...

The AmeriKat reading the  Court of Appeal judgment The AmeriKat frequently prowls the Daily Cause List ( the list of scheduled hearings and decisions in the English Courts) searching for interesting IP hearings and decisions being handed down.  Although the Unwired Planet appeal hearing was in May, no sign of the Court of Appeal's decision was appearing in the Daily Cause List.  The overheated English summer saw no sign.  Nor did the first windy days of the new Court term.  But then, there it was.  On Friday afternoon, it appeared on the AmeriKat's screen as follows: TUESDAY, 23 OCTOBER, 2018 in COURT 74, at 10.30, Judgment will be given in the following: APPEAL From The Chancery Division Patents Court FINAL DECISIONS A3/2017/1784 Unwired Planet International Limited and anr -v- Huawei Technologies Co. Limited and anr. This will be an important decision for global FRAND/SEP litigation and strategy (see previous reports here ).  One of the key issue...

Aargh, gosh we lost the appeal! Can a US corporation selling construction software only in the Americas under the name ARGOS be sued for infringement of a registered trade mark by a UK based consumer goods retailer who trades mainly in the UK and Ireland under the same name? This question is posed by Floyd LJ in the introduction to the Court of Appeal decision on the Argos Ltd v Argos Systems Inc [2018] EWCA Civ 2211 . The formulation of the question may make it easy to guess the Court of Appeal's ultimate decision. Background The IPKat report on the High Court decision is available here .  Broadly speaking, the dispute concerns the domain name argos.com and Google's AdSense programme. Floyd LJ handily describes this programme as follows: Google AdSense allows website operators to contract with Google to provide space on members' ("partners'") websites to display advertisements ("ads" for short). Google has a further programme known as AdWords, whic...