Patent decision

BL number

O/714/21

Concerning rights in

GB2578612

Hearing Officer

Mr H Jones

Decision date

29 September 2021

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

PMF Products Ltd

Provisions discussed

Section 72

Keywords

Costs, Inventive step, Novelty, Revocation

Related Decisions

None

Summary

An uncontested application for revocation of the patent on the grounds of lack of novelty and inventive step based on prior public disclosure of the patentee’s products. The claimant asked for off-scale costs on account of the patentee having acted in bad faith in filing the application knowing that the invention had already been disclosed to the public and also for enforcing the patent when it knew it wasn’t valid. The hearing officer found that the patentee had behaved reasonably by not contesting the application for revocation. In any case, it is tribunal practice to not award costs against a patentee in undefended revocation actions unless factors exist which suggest otherwise. The patent was ordered to be revoked and no costs order was made.

Full decision O/714/21 54Kb