Oil drilling patent invalid (old news!)

Red Spider Technology v Omega Completions Technology [2010] EWHC 59 (Pat) is a patent case before Mr Justice Mann dating from 21 January 2010 but only just on BAILII. It’s an infringement claim, plus a challenge to validity on grounds of insufficiency, lack of novelty and obviousness, with amendment and priority points too. There is also a claim of design right infringement. 47 pages in the printable RTF version, which is a bit too much to assimilate this early in the morning, so I will post the bare bones and add more if appropriate when I have had a chance to study the judgment. I think it might teach me more about drilling for oil than it does about patent law …
It does say that all the claims failed, and the counterclaim succeeded so the patent was revoked. Another case to add to the balance that shows whether the courts are ‘anti-patent’ or not. But to class a case as ‘anti-patent’ does strike me as shortsighted – just because a patent is revoked doesn’t mean the judge (or the courts in general) is against patents as a whole: more patents – more IP of any description – is not necessarily an unalloyed good thing. Although sometimes it seems that quantity,  not quality, matters most.

Posted by petergrove