Patent decision
- BL number
- O/185/05
- Concerning rights in
- GB 9901474.8, PCT/GB00/00176, GB 2363373, GB 2361909 and foreign applications
- Hearing Officer
- Mr R C Kennell
- Decision date
- 1 July 2005
- Person(s) or Company(s) involved
- Michael Wayne Crabtree v Ralph Barclay Ross
- Provisions discussed
- PA 1977 sections 8, 10, 12, 37
- Keywords
- Costs, Entitlement, Inventorship
- Related Decisions
- O/188/04
Summary
The parties having failed to settle their dispute on the basis of the finding in O/188/04 in respect of GB 9901474.8, PCT/GB00/00176*, GB 2363373 and corresponding foreign applications, the hearing officer considered the parties submissions on the form of order to be made and on costs. R had in the meantime commenced proceedings (currently stayed) in respect of a parallel family of applications and patents in C's sole name (GB 2361909, PCT/US00/00887* and corresponding foreign applications), which had not been considered to be formally within the earlier proceedings.
The hearing officer took the view that the issues of entitlement and inventorship on the latter family had been sufficiently covered by the earlier proceedings to justify their inclusion in the order to be made. In respect of foreign applications and patents, specifically the US patents arising from each of the patent families, he did not consider it appropriate on the information available to go further than making a declaration in respect of the GB and PCT applications from which they derived. Noting that the Court of Appeal had specifically rejected a claim-by-claim approach to inventorship in Markem v Zipher [2005] EWCA Civ 267, the hearing officer proposed to make a declaration that C and R were the joint inventors of the non-uniform surface profiles in both patent families. The hearing officer also set out the core terms of an order allowing the parties to work the invention independently of each other and withdrawing the new proceedings initiated by R, but considered that he had nothing on which he could arrive at a suitable royalty rate for cross-licenses. A period was allowed for the parties to make submissions on further matters which appeared necessary to make the order effective. Costs were awarded on the standard scale.
(* - PCT/GB00/00176 and PCT/US00/00887 are published as WO 00/43295 and WO 00/43235 respectively.)
Full decision O/185/05 
38Kb
