The court was asked as to the extent to which a purchaser of a patented article had an implied licence to keep it in repair. Buckley LJ said: ‘The cardinal question must be whether what has been done can fairly be termed a repair, having regard to the nature of the patented article. If it is, any purchaser of such an article, whether from the patentee . . or from a purchaser from the patentee . . is impliedly licenced to carry it out or to contract with someone else to carry it out for him . .’
A purchaser of an article is impliedly licenced to infringe the owner’s copyright in drawings of parts of that article so far as is necessary to enable repairs to be carried out. A licence was implied since, without it, the reproduction of the parts would be unlawful.
Judges:
Buckley LJ
Citations:
[1977] RPC 537
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Kaisha v Green Cartridge Company (Hong Kong) Limited PC 30-Apr-1997
(Hong Kong) The claimants complained of the sale by the defendants of refilled cartridges for use with their printers.
Held: The spare cartridge manufacturer’s appeal failed: ‘repair is by definition something which does not amount to the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Intellectual Property
Updated: 01 May 2022; Ref: scu.242420