An assignment I am busy with at the moment has reminded me of the 1978 case,
Nichols Advanced Vehicle Systems, Inc. v Rees, Oliver and others [1979] RPC 127 (Chancery Division, Templeman J as he then was), on appeal [1985] RPC 445. (As the dates indicate, the appeal concerned various delays that had taken place in the proceedings.) It could alternatively be called
Shadow v Arrows. Several disgruntled employees, and their financial backer
Franco Ambrosio, left Shadow (whose debut in Formula 1 I remember, though I can't put a precise date on it from memory - in the early seventies - 1973, it turns out) and set up their own team, making up the name from the initials of their surnames, including that of their financial backer (Ambrosio,
Rees,
Oliver, Wass and
Southgate completing the set. Alan Rees had been one of the founders of March a decade earlier, and that company also formed its name from the initials of its founders, the "M" being Max Mosley, but no intellectual property point arises from that coincidence). Unfortunately, they made up the design of their first car, the FA1, from the design of the Arrows DN9, and intellectual property points did arise from that.
I was delighted to see (not having appreciated it before) that the trial judge was Templeman J. A few years later, "Syd Vicious" was one of the Lords of Appeal who dealt BL a major blow in their litigation with Armstrong Patents Ltd - knocking a huge hole in copyright protection for designs, and paving the way for the New Deal in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the introduction of design right (now necessarily referred to as UK unregistered design right) and the near-exclusion of copyright from the designs field. But the reasons that drove the BL judgment, about spare parts, were not relevant to the Shadow case: there was no issue about the spare parts market.
The DN9 had been designed by Tony Southgate, who had been BRM's designer in their golden period between 1970 and 1972. The BRM P160, designed by him, held the distinction for 30 years of winning the fastest Grand Prix ever (Italy, 1971, driven by Peter Gethin, still the closest-ever finish) and exactly the same car (chassis no 1) also won the following year's Monaco Grand Prix, driven by Jean-Pierre Beltoise, who died last January. That remains, I think, the third-slowest grand prix since the advent of the World Championship in 1950, save for recent rain-delayed races where waiting for the rain to stop destroys the average speed. In 1972 the rain didn't delay the start, only the finish ...
When Mr Southgate designed the Arrows FA1, he reproduced the drawings he had made for the DN9 and the judge held (in what must have been a fairly easy case to decide) that the differences between the designs were insufficient to provide a defence. The defendants argued that they were innocent infringers, and should not be liable to damages, but the judge observed that to sustain this argument they had to believe that they were not infringing, and in fact they only hoped that they weren't. Actually, because of the flagrancy of the infringement, he awarded additional damages, as well as an inquiry as to damages and an injunction which effectively obliged Arrows to produce a new car. Fortunately for them, they had foreseen the outcome of the case and designed and built a complete new car in 53 days, launching it only three days after the judgment, so didn't even miss a race. I suppose that back in the bad old days of Cosworth-Hewland kitcars that was possible, but still impressive.
Several years later, the inquiry as to damages having proceeded at a very leisurely pace (partly, no doubt, because Shadow had folded in the meantime), the matter came to the Court of Appeal: but that's another story, and not one that involves intellectual property.
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