Waterfront achieves success for Ningbo Wentai Sports Equipment Co Limited at recent Case Management Conference.
Ningbo Wentai Sports Equipment Co Limited (“Ningbo”) is based in China and deals with an extensive range of sports equipment including golf pull/push carts, electrical golf carts and golf accessory trailers.
Ningbo’s dispute with Jonathan Hwan Wang is in relation to a “One-click” golf trolley for which Mr Wang owned a UK patent. Waterfront commenced proceedings on behalf of Ningbo seeking invalidity of the patent and then obtained summary judgment in Ningbo’s favour. However, Mr Wang brought a counterclaim alleging breach of confidence.
For more details about the case see here. On 5 October 2012, at the Case Management Conference for the counterclaim, Judge Birss QC summarily assessed Ningbo’s costs in respect of the invalidity claim in the sum of £15,785.
Ningbo was represented at the hearing by Matthew Harris, a Partner at Waterfront, with Mr Wang being represented by a barrister from a leading set of IP chambers. Commenting upon the decision, Mr Harris said:
“the Order for costs made by Judge Birss QC clarifies the costs position where a part of the case has been concluded and an independent Counterclaim continues to trial. Significantly, each can be treated as separate proceedings for the purposes of applying the overall cost caps that apply in cases before the Patents County Court.”
Philip Partington, a Solicitor at Waterfront said:
“Once again, the judge has made it clear that the various cost caps in Patent County Court litigation should be interpreted flexibly. He allowed work on a detailed letter before action to be classed as part of the ‘particulars of claim’ stage of the litigation. He also accepted our argument that summary judgment application witness statements could be included under the general ‘witness statements’ costs and not just costs of the application. As a result, the monies awarded to Wentai were much greater.”
The Waterfront team was led by Matthew Harris and included Philip Partington.
Online influential parenting platform, Mumsnet, has launched a legal complaint against OpenAI, the developer of chatbot ChatGPT, accusing the AI company of scraping billions of words and content from the site without consent. While many organisations have raised concerns about tech companies creating, developing and training AI tools…
A recent EU trade mark application for the word mark, PUT PUTIN IN, has been refused by the European Union Intellectual Property Office on the grounds of being contrary to public policy or to accepted principles of morality. While a fairly straightforward decision, this is a timely reminder…
Late yesterday UK time, it was reported that a lawyer for Twitter had sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg complaining about Meta’s new Threads app. Twitter claimed that it “has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (Meta) has engaged in systematic, wilful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.