Patent decision

BL number
O/087/03
Concerning rights in
EP(UK)0804763
Hearing Officer
Mr P Hayward
Decision date
2 April 2003
Person(s) or Company(s) involved
Intel Corporation v Via Technologies Inc.
Provisions discussed
PA1977 section 27
Keywords
Amendment
Related Decisions
O/268/02, O/488/02

Summary

Intel applied to amend patent No EP(UK)0804763 following discontinuation of a High Court action in which the amendments were originally put forward. Via opposed on validity and discretionary grounds but immediately sought a mechanism to pursue only the discretionary grounds without being estopped from pursuing the validity grounds in future. This resulted in the Order of 6 September 2001 excluding the validity issues, so the present decision was only concerned with whether there were grounds for declining to exercise the comptrollers discretion to allow the amendments. On this, Via were unsuccessful in their allegations that Intel knew of a certain passage in a book substantially before they applied to amend, that Intel had not given proper reasons for the amendments, and that they had misused a disclosure order in related proceedings in Singapore delay in framing the amendments. The hearing officer also rejected Vias allegations that Intel had not made adequate investigations to find out just how the book came to include this passage. The amendments were allowed.

Full decision O/087/03 PDF document40Kb