Patent decision

BL number

O/032/00

Concerning rights in

GB 2245583

Hearing Officer

Mr G M Bridges

Decision date

9 February 2000

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Nigel Sullivan-Tailyour v Smartwater Limited

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 section 72

Keywords

Costs, Revocation, Withdrawal

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The claimant had launched an action for revocation of the patent owned by the defendant, based on novelty and inventive step grounds. Following submissions and the appointment of a preliminary hearing to clarify matters in relation to the evidence, the claimant withdrew the revocation action. The defendants requested an award of costs. The Hearing Officer found that although the claimant had a genuine belief that there was an issue to be tried when he launched his action, he subsequently showed a lack of proper care in not taking professional advice before filing his evidence-in-chief. This was particularly true since the claimant had received a warning from the Office about the possible deficiency of his statement, which did not establish any dates or contain technical information and thus did not allow the defendant to see the relevance to his invention. Maintaining the application for revocation after further queries amounted to an abuse of the comptrollers jurisdiction. Contributory costs were therefore awarded against the claimant.

Full decision O/032/00 21Kb