Neil Parpworth considers the limits of the court’s leniency when it comes to breaching an embargo
- In Interdigital Technology Corp and others v Lenovo Group Ltd and others [2023] EWCA Civ 57, in which a draft judgment was circulated despite its embargo, the Court of Appeal considered that the circumstances were not sufficiently egregious to warrant further action to be taken against the contemnor.
- However, properly respecting an embargo ought to remain a priority, since the courts may eventually decide that a formal sanction is necessary to deter others from making the same mistake.
In delivering the judgment of the Court of Appeal in R (on the application of Counsel General for Wales) v Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy [2022] EWCA Civ 181, [2022] All ER (D) 79 (Feb), the Master of the Rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos noted that as far as he had been able to discover, there had only been two previous court decisions relating to the breach of an embargo on publishing a draft judgment: see Baigent v Random House (Re The
