31 March 2017
Epoch Company Ltd v Character Options Ltd [2017] EWHC 556 (IPEC), [2017] All ER (D) 165 (Mar)
The Intellectual Property Enterprise Court considered a claim for infringement of the claimant company’s patent, and the defendant company’s counterclaim that the patent lacked validity. The court held that the invention claimed was not an aesthetic creation, and that there was sufficient synergy to treat the invention claimed as a single invention. However, on the evidence, the claims in issue lacked inventive step over the prior art, either as originally proposed or as amended and, therefore, the patent was invalid.
