IPO Before a decision on an application under section 72 issued uninvited submissions were received from the defendants arguing that there had been irregularities at the substantive hearing which warranted reopening the proceedings. A further hearing was held to consider these submissions and, in his decision, the HO indicated that, since the matters raised could and should have been raised at the substantive hearing, he intended awarding the claimants a lump sum which approximated to the full costs that they had incurred in dealing with the submissions. The defendants were allowed an opportunity to submit specific and properly argued comments on the schedule of costs provided by the claimants.
The defendants raised a number of general arguments to support their view that the parties should bear their own costs but the HO pointed out he had already considered these arguments at the hearing before deciding to award full costs to the claimants. The defendants also argued that the schedule included costs relating to matters not considered at the hearing. The claimants, however, maintained that all the costs related to issues which they understood would be argued at the hearing. The HO agreed with the claimants who had been put in the position of preparing their case without knowledge of the issues they needed to address – the first indication of the case which the defendants intended to argue had been provided in their skeleton argument filed the day before the hearing.
Since the defendants had made no submissions on the specific items in the schedule there was no reason to suppose that any of the costs were unreasonably high or unreasonably incurred. The HO therefore directed that Interfilta (UK) Ltd should pay Camfil AB their full costs of 12805.75.
Judges:
Mr P Hayward
Citations:
O/498/02, [2002] UKIntelP o49802
Links:
Citing:
See Also – Camfil Ab v Interfilta (UK) Ltd (Patent) IPO 5-Oct-2001
IPO During the evidence rounds of a revocation action, the applicant for revocation filed a supplementary statement of case with their evidence-in-reply, which brought in a completely new point. The patentee was . .
Cited by:
Cited – Camfil Ab v Interfilta (UK) Ltd (Patent) IPO 20-Aug-2003
IPO In an earlier decision ([2002] UKIntelP o39102) the HO held that all the claims were invalid but he gave the patentees an opportunity to submit amendments. The HO decided that the amendments offered did not . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property
Updated: 16 October 2022; Ref: scu.455394