They think it's all over -- but the Comptroller can intervene

Kennametal Inc v Pramet Tools SRO, Associated Production Tools Ltd and Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks, a Court of Appeal, England and Wales, ruling last Wednesday, is noted on subscription service Lawtel. It's a short case.

After Kennametal's UK patent was held invalid in earlier proceedings ([2014] EWHC 565 (Pat)), Kennametal did not seek permission to appeal against the revocation decision. Instead ,it applied -- and failed -- to get a stay of an order revoking the patent, pending the outcome of an application to amend which it had brought before the European Patent Office. Kennametal subsequently did appeal against the refusal to stay the revocation. Shortly before the date fixed for hearing this appeal, Kennametal and Pramet reached a settlement. The day before the hearing, the Comptroller received notice from Pramet that it intended neither to oppose the appeal nor to attend the hearing. At this point the Comptroller immediately served notice, stating its intention to intervene and to attend the hearing in order to oppose the appeal. The Court of Appeal ((the Chancellor, Sir Terence Etherton, together with Lords Justices Christopher Clarke and Vos) had to decide whether it was appropriate to adjourn in light of the recent developments.


Granting the Comptroller's application, the Court of Appeal held that the points raised in the appeal were important and of general application in relation to the revocation of patents. It was accordingly important that the appeal be argued properly and fairly. If that were to be done, it was perfectly clear that there was no alternative to adjourning the appeal in order to allow the important points of principle to be argued properly by the Comptroller.

This ruling serves as a warning that, while settlement of a dispute by mutual agreement between the parties is a desirable aim, it is not an end in itself and, in this case, it is not an end to the litigation either.

Revocation proceedings not an abuse of process even if not commercially justified

In TNS Group Holdings Ltd v Neilsen Media Research Inc. [2009] EWHC 1160 (Pat), a decision of Mr Justice Arnold of 20 May, the Patents Court for England and Wales ruled that the Patents Act 1977, s.72(1), which states that "any person" may apply to revoke a granted patent, means exactly what it says. On this basis, the intention of a claimant in revocation proceedings is irrelevant and it is not therefore an abuse of process to bring a revocation action even if the applicant has no commercial reason to do so. In this case, the patent owner had offered the claimant a licence to use the patent (for television audience management measurement systems) on terms which -- though confidential -- must have been sufficiently attractive for the patentee to be able to argue that the plaintiff would be no better off if the patent were revoked than if it remained in force.

The judge went further: a claimant's declared intention to use validity decision in the United Kingdom as persuasive authority when seeking revocation in other European jurisdictions was legitimate, since consistency of decisions as between European jurisdictions is a desirable end. As he said (at para.26):

"It is commonplace for parties litigating on the same European patent in a number of Contracting States to put before the courts of one Contracting State decisions arrived at in one or more other Contracting States. I do not see that such conduct can possibly be stigmatised as an abuse of process. That is particularly so given that such judgments may come to the attention of courts in other Contracting States in any event. The courts of all the Contracting States are seeking to apply the same substantive law. It would be most unfortunate if anything were to be done which made it more difficult for the courts of the Contracting States to arrive at common answers to common questions".

Having so held, Arnold J in any event refused to stay the revocation action before him, pending the outcome of opposition proceedings in the European Patent Office since the EPO proceedings would take at least two years longer than a final decision in the UK courts.