Secretary of State v Servier: Supremes decline to broaden scope of unlawful means tort

When a patent is held to be invalid for want of novelty or inventiveness, a party which has suffered loss by being denied access to cheaper products cannot get damages on the basis that their loss was caused by unlawful means. In Secretary of State for Health v Servier Laboratories Ltd, where the loss arose because there were no generic equivalents of the invalidly-patented drug, the Supreme Court held that the "dealing requirement" laid down in OBG Ltd v Allan [2008] 1 AC 1, which states that the unlawful means should have affected the third party’s freedom to deal with the claimant, is a necessary element of the tort. So it's not exactly a patent case, but it deals with interesting questions about what an applicant or patentee can and can't do to protect their invention when novelty or inventiveness is in doubt.

The issue of the validity of the UK designation of the patent in suit was held to be invalid as long ago as July 2007 by the late Pumfrey J held ([2007] EWHC 1538 (Pat)). It lacked novelty, or alternatively was obvious over another existing patent. The Court of Appeal upheld that decision in May 2008 ([2008] EWCA Civ 445), the leading judgment being given by Jacob LJ, and in 2009 the EPO Technical Board of Appeal revoked the patent.

Causing loss by unlawful means is an economic tort, consisting of acts intended to cause loss to the claimant by interfering with the freedom of a third party in a way which is unlawful and which is intended to cause loss to the claimant. In this case, the claimant was of course the Secretary of State (not the recently departed one - it would have been Jeremy Hunt at the relevant time) and the third parties whose freedom was interfered with were the European Patent Office and the courts of England and Wales. As neither of the third parties had dealt with the Secretary of State, the claim could only succeed if the court said that the dealing requirement did not form part of the ratio of OBG or departed from that case (which, incidentally, was one of three cases dealt with together by the House of Lords, one of the others being better-known to IP lawyers: Douglas v Hello!).

To cut a fairly long story (30 pages) short, the Supremes could see no reason to do either of these things. In reviewing Lord Hoffmann's reasons in OBG for imposing the requirement, they listed seven good reasons for it, which should be enough for anyone. The claim was struck out by the judge at first instance, the Court of Appeal upheld him, and now the Supremes have too.

Whether the patentee deceived the EPO or the courts is another matter: for the purposes of the strike-out, it was assumed that they had, but the important matter is that there was no sufficient connection between the alleged deception and the loss that the Secretary of State claimed to have suffered. Under the 1966 Practice Statement which remains effective in the Supreme Court (see Practice Direction 3, para 3.1.3), there was no reason for the Supreme Court to depart from OBG, no injustice that called for the invocation of that Statement.

But this is an intellectual property law blog, so we should leave the tort law to others - if the Secretary of State cannot claim on the basis of unlawful means, what can he (or, though not then and not now, she) do about what would (if proven) be reprehensible conduct? Jacob LJ dealt with this back in 2008, saying that there might be a sanction under competition law but noting that the application of that body of law to unmeritorious patents was not something that had been explored. There is, it seems, a claim that Servier's conduct amounts to an abuse of a dominant position, and we (and the Secretary of State) must now wait to see how that goes. It certainly looks more promising, and more closely related to patent law than the tort under consideration in today's judgment.

Counterclaim for invalidity based on earlier common-law rights fails to see off trade mark infringement claim

In an action for infringement of the trade mark CRYPTOBACK (Wirex Ltd v Cryptocarbon Global Ltd & Ors [2021] EWHC 617 (IPEC) (16 March 2021)) the defendants argued that they had earlier rights to the name, and also that the application to register it had been made in bad faith, but acknowledged that if they lost on their counterclaim they were infringing the trade mark.

 

The counterclaim was therefore a slightly unusual s.5(4) claim, based on the defendants’ ability to oppose the registration because they had common law rights that, in other circumstances, would have enabled them to sue for passing off. The test for passing off is set out in Lord Oliver’s judgment in Reckitt & Colman Products Ltd v Borden Inc [1990] 1 WLR 491 and the present case turned on whether the defendants (counterclaimants) had goodwill in the word. To succeed, they had to convince Hacon J that the name had been distinctive of their services at the claimant’s filing date.

 

The name was plainly a neologism, formed by merging elements of the words “cryptocurrency” and “cashback”. A neologism is not inherently non-distinctive, but it could be taken by consumers to be a new word for a type of goods or services, especially when used for something innovative. Linoleum Manufacturing Company v Nairn [1878] 7 Ch. D. 834 illustrates the problem: the product was protected by patents, which were assigned by the inventor to the plaintiff company which he set up to exploit them, but the name “linoleum”, coined by the inventor to denote the product, was used to denote the substance not (exclusively) the source of the substance, so the defendant could not be stopped from marketing his product as “Linoleum floor-Cloth” after the patents expired.

 

The evidence did not support Global’s contention that they owned goodwill in the name when the trade mark was applied for. There had been email campaigns, a web article and an invoice, but that did not amount to enough to impress the judge. To make matters worse for Global, in the few months of use before the filing date, they had actually applied the name CCRBBACK to their service, which made it more likely that CRYPTOBACK would be seen as a generic name for a new type of service.

Comparable trade marks, pre-Brexit use and EU trade marks as earlier rights

Having spent time today delving into some more of the darker corners of the changes to intellectual property law that Brexit has foisted on us, and also having had an e-mail conversation with a friend in the EU who told me he had been surprised when his clients received a bunch of unasked-for comparable trade marks from the UK registry at the turn of the year, I have a few things to say about trade marks today.

Comparable trade marks are the oddly-named UK trade marks that were spawned by EU trade marks on IP completion day, which was 11 pm on 31 December 2020. Calling a precise time such as 11 pm a "day" is a relatively innocent form of Newspeak, which it's no longer surprising to hear coming from our government. The reason the day in question started at 11 pm rather than midnight, as most days do, was simply that it was midnight in most of the EU, which doesn't seem to me to be a particularly good reason given that it wasn't the rest of the EU that was undergoing radical change at that moment (significant change, but short of radical) and hardly smacks of "taking back control". We'll take back control, but at a time to suit you.

Anyway, I digress, as usual. These new-fangled comparable trade marks (which come in two flavours, EU and International, depending on how the parent EU trade mark came into existence) look deceptively simple. They are, to all intents and purposes, UK trade marks and treated in exactly the same way under the Trade Marks Act 1994 - in most respects. They are instantly recognisable (if you need to recognise them) by their numbers: a prefix, UK009, is tacked on to the parent's EU registration number. A neat solution, although it leaves a lot of gaps in the register. (I wonder whether the IPO will triumphantly announce a ten-fold increase in new trade mark registrations in 2021?)

But go a little deeper and comparables get a lot more complicated. I want to consider two points here (because trying to do more would make this post too long and boring): will a comparable derived from an EU trade mark that hasn't been used in the UK in the past five years be instantly vulnerable to revocation for non-use; and how will an application for a declaration of invalidity play out where the earlier rights against which a UK trade mark is allegedly invalid were an EU trade mark?

The answer to the second question first, and I have just realised that there are in fact two elements to it. Will that EU trade mark still be an earlier right, and if not will its comparable stand in its metaphorical shoes? The answers seem to be no, and yes. The EU trade mark lost its status as an earlier right on the stroke of 11 that night, but the baton passed to its comparable which inherited all the vital statistics of its parent, including priority and seniority dates. So the conflict still has to be resolved, although presumably some trade mark litigators have been obliged to do some nifty footwork to substitute the comparable for the parent EU trade mark.

This is all buried in the Trade Marks (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (SI 2019/269), 28 pages of amendments many of which make little sense unless you have the Trade Marks Act open beside you. (Incidentally, the IPO has helpfully published an unofficial consolidation of the TMA with all these changes in it - though I wonder how it can be called "unofficial" when the office has produced it.) This change is one of those effected by Schedule 1, which (confusingly, to me anyway) inserts a new schedule 2A into the 1994 Act with all this good stuff in it.

As for the question of use or non-use, that is dealt with by stipulating that the use made of the parent EU trade mark is credited to the account of the comparable. That is logical, up to a point, because the comparable has inherited the priority and seniority of the comparable, so it's right to say that any use in the UK needs to be considered as use of the comparable in the UK. But that leaves a problem: what if the parent EU trade mark hadn't been used in the UK prior to IP completion day, but elsewhere in the EU? In that situation, the government says, it would be unfair and an unintended consequence to say that you are creating a new trade mark that is born with five years' non-use baked into it, so use of the parent EU trade mark anywhere in the EU will save it, which to a tiny but discernible extent negates the whole idea of leaving the EU.

Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd v Zodiac Seats UK Ltd [2013] UKSC 46 (3 July 2013)

Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd v Zodiac Seats UK Ltd [2013] UKSC 46 (3 July 2013) was the Supreme Court's (Lord Neuberger (President), Lady Hale, Lord Clarke, Lord Sumption, Lord Reed, Lord Carnwath's) opportunity to rule that the proprietor of a patent which is declared invalid cannot hang on to damages recovered for an infringement of it. Or, to put it another way, a defendant can rely on the subsequent amendment of patent claims to relieve them from liability for damages, which certainly sounds right. A bit of a bifuracation problem - the patent was held valid in the English courts but invalidated by the Technical Board of Appeal in the EPO. For speed, here is the Supreme Court press release:

BACKGROUND TO THE APPEAL

Virgin obtained judgment from the English Court of Appeal (“the CA”) against Zodiac for damages to be assessed for the infringement of certain claims (“the relevant claims”) in a European Patent. The CA found their patent to have been valid and infringed by Zodiac. Subsequently, the Technical Board of Appeal (“the TBA”) of the European Patent Office (“the EPO”) ruled that that the relevant claims were invalid because they had been anticipated in prior art, and retrospectively amended the patent so as to remove, with effect from the date of grant, all the relevant claims.   

Virgin submitted that it was nevertheless entitled to recover damages for infringement because the CA’s conclusions - that the patent (including the relevant claims) was valid and that the relevant claims were infringed by Zodiac - were res judicata as between it and Zodiac on the subsequent assessment of damages, and that it was not open to Zodiac to reply on the TBA’s amendment to the patent, as this would be inconsistent with the orders made by the CA. That argument had succeeded before the CA in similar circumstances in previous cases, and the CA had followed those decisions in the present case. Zodiac’s case is that the unamended patent has been retrospectively amended, and that the relevant claims therefore no longer exist, and are deemed never to have existed. It submits that no issue of res judicata arises because that was not the situation considered by the CA.

JUDGMENT

The Supreme Court unanimously allows the appeal and declares that Zodiac are entitled to rely on the amendment of patent in answer to Virgin’s claim for damages on the enquiry. Lord Sumption gives the lead judgment, Lord Neuberger gives a concurring judgment, and the other members of the Court agree with both judgments. 

REASONS FOR THE JUDGMENT

After a review of the law of res judicata [17-26], the Court gives two related reasons why Zodiac cannot be precluded from relying on the decision of the TBA on the enquiry as to damages. One is that it is relying on the more limited terms of a different patent which, by virtue of the TBA’s decision, must at the time of the enquiry be treated as the one that existed at the relevant time, whereas the unamended patent, relied on by Virgin, must be treated as if it had never existed. The second reason is that Zodiac is not seeking to reopen the validity of the relevant claims, which was one of the questions determined by the CA. The invalidity of those claims may be the reason the TBA amended the patent, but Zodiac is relying on the mere fact of amendment, not the reasons why it happened [27, 53, 54].

The CA reached a different conclusion because it followed a line of cases holding that a patentee, whose patent (in proceedings against a particular defendant) is found to be valid and infringed, is entitled to claim damages from the defendant for the infringement without regard to a subsequent revocation of the patent, even though as a matter of English law the revocation of  a patent for invalidity relates back to the date of grant [28, 48]. 

The Court holds that this line of cases was wrongly decided. Their major fallacy is the assumption that cause of action estoppel was absolute generally rather than absolute only as regards points actually determined by the earlier decision. Accordingly, the decisions in those cases had no regard to the fact that the consequences of the patent’s subsequent revocation had not been, and could not have been, determined, or even taken into account, in the earlier decision, because it had not happened by the time of that decision. They were also wrong to suppose that, by taking into account the subsequent revocation, a court would be rehearing the question of validity decided by the judgment on liability.

The revocation was a decision in rem determining the status of the patent as against the world [32, 48]. It had been revoked by the authority which had granted it and it must be treated as never having existed. The issue raised on the enquiry was not invalidity but revocation [32].  

Accordingly, where judgment is given in an English court that a patent (whether English or European) is valid and infringed, and that patent is subsequently revoked or amended (whether  n England or at the EPO), the defendant is entitled to rely on the revocation or amendment on  he enquiry as to damages [35].

The Supreme Court also proposed that the current procedural guidelines laid down by the CA,  which propose that the English court should normally refuse to stay its own proceedings if it  would be likely to resolve the question of validity significantly earlier than the EPO, should be re-examined [38, 69].