Patent decision

BL number

O/378/15

Concerning rights in

GB2459372B

Hearing Officer

Mr S Probert

Decision date

5 August 2015

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

TWI Limited v Zircotec IP Limited

Provisions discussed

Rule 81, rule 74

Keywords

Extensions of time, Revocation

Related Decisions

None

Summary

This is a decision refusing an extension of time request.

The day before a counterstatement was due to be filed, the registered proprietor in these revocation proceedings objected that the statement of grounds had not been verified by a statement of truth. After the statement had been verified by the claimant, the Office re-served the statement on the registered proprietor setting a period of one week for a counterstatement. The registered proprietor requested an EOT of a further three weeks.

The registered proprietor argued that it should not be expected to work on a counterstatement in the absence of a verified statement of truth. The hearing officer was prepared to accept this, but indicated that there was a clear obligation to raise the matter with the Office promptly in view of the overriding objective. He concluded that either the deficiency was not noticed until the day before the period was due to expire, or the deficiency was noticed earlier and the registered proprietor decided to wait until the last minute before raising it. In the former case, the registered proprietor had only lost one or (at most) two days and had been more than compensated by the additional week that was allowed when the statement of grounds was re-served. In the latter case, the registered proprietor chose to waste time, and should not be allowed to waste more.

Full decision O/378/15 65Kb