The first and only properly reported judgment from the Small Claims Track of the Intellectual Property & Enterprise Court (IPEC, formerly the Patents County Court for England and Wales) has appeared on the BAILII database of judgments.  District Judge Melissa Clarke’s meticulous judgment in Taylor v Maguire [2013] EWHC 3804 (IPEC) found for the claimant Suzy Taylor, a paper-cutting artist, represented by junior counsel Ashton Chantrielle and Forsters, a law firm.  The defendant (a mother whose teenage daughter seems to have done the actual infringing) did not enter an appearance.

The case seems to have started in June 2013 or a little afterwards, and was set down for one day of reading time and a one day trial on 12 September 2013, which is certainly pretty quick.  It would have been nice for the judgment to issue equally speedily but in fact it is dated 3 December 2013.  However, there were several infringements, none “dead copies”, so it is perhaps not surprising that it took a little while.

This is only the tip of the iceberg - there are clearly unreported cases going on out there.  Jaani Riordan claims the first oral hearing, in Allergan Inc v Richardson [2013] (IPEC), “successfully obtaining default judgment against distributor of beauty products under the BOTOX trade marks”.  No doubt that didn’t require a written judgment.

Mr Simon Brown, an underwater photographer, reports “The Case of The Ignored Watermark” - his own story as the successful claimant in Brown v Mayoh on his website, from which the following summary is drawn (with a consequent disclaimer from us).  The case was about copyright in photographs of the sunken remains of a World War 2 Dornier bomber.  He started his case on 26 September 2013 and the trial was on 17 April 2014 – a little under six months end-to-end.  He represented himself before Judge Clarke.  Again, the unrepresented defendant, a rival photographer, was a no-show at trial but asked for his written submissions to be taken into account.  The Judge found for Mr Brown, and awarded extra damages for flagrancy since the defendant had taken even the watermark in the image.

Amateur Photographer magazine claim to have seen a transcript of the trial in Framing Success Ltd (t/a Success Photography) v H Tempest Ltd, (IPEC) 21 November 2013, another photography copyright case involving the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE).  Their report appears under the title Copyright storm over Duke of Edinburgh’s Award photo.  The claimant had taken the photo as part of their contract with the DofE.  When they lost their contract to the defendant (a larger company), the defendant used their image on its own website, adding copyright insult to economic injury.  According to the claimant they cared more about the morality than the money, and the judge appears to have rebuked the defendants for their conduct.

So, no signs of dissatisfaction from those ever-vocal individual claimants as yet.  However, dear readers, if you have any information on what is going on in the Small Claims track, please post it here – we are keen to know how it is working out.

Written by David Musker and posted by Jeremy.