Ooo Abbott and Another v Design & Display Ltd and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Judge Hacon |
| Judgment Date | 26 April 2017 |
| Neutral Citation | [2017] EWHC 932 (IPEC) |
| Docket Number | Case No: CC12 P01174 |
| Court | Intellectual Property Enterprise Court |
| Date | 26 April 2017 |
[2017] EWHC 932 (IPEC)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
CHANCERY DIVISION
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ENTERPRISE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice, Rolls Building
Fetter Lane, London, EC4A 1NL
His Honour Judge Hacon
Case No: CC12 P01174
Chris Aikens (instructed by Gordons Partnership LLP) for the Claimants
Tom St Quintin (instructed by Appleyard Lees IP LLP) for the Defendants
Hearing date: 1 March 2017
Introduction
In a judgment dated 24 February 2016, [2016] EWCA Civ 95, the Court of Appeal allowed an appeal against an order made by me dated 16 October 2014, in which I assessed sums due to the claimants (collectively referred to as "Abbott"). This followed the trial of an account of profits and my judgment of 4 September 2014, [2014] EWHC 2924 (IPEC) ("the first account judgment").
Earlier HHJ Birss QC had found that Abbott's European Patent (UK) No. 1 816 931 ("the Patent") was valid and had been infringed by the defendants, see judgment of 30 May 2013, [2013] EWPCC 27.
The Patent claimed a display panel of the type used to display goods in shops. The important part of the invention concerns inserts made of a resilient metal, typically aluminium. The inserts are located into horizontal slots cut into the panels. Shelves or hangars for displaying goods are supported by the inserts.
Abbott settled their case against the second defendant and so the trial on the account concerned only the first defendant ("Design & Display").
The Order of the Court of Appeal on 24 February 2016 included this:
"2. The Account of profits be remitted to the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court for determination of the following issues:
(a) What proportion of sales of slatted panel sold together with infringing inserts should be included within the Appellant's account of profits?
(b) What deductions (if any) for general overheads may the Appellant make in its account of profits?"
The background facts
Lewison LJ quoted from my description of Design & Display's business:
"[5] Design & Display manufactures and sells retail equipment, including display panels for use in shops. … [Its] primary business was as a joiner for shopfitters, making bespoke items of shop furniture, … called 'equipment'. This equipment included displays, some of which had slatted panels (sometimes referred to as slatboards or slatwalls) sold both in standard sizes and as custom-sized panels. These were the panels with horizontal slots into which the aluminium inserts could be introduced – in the case of the infringing inserts, introduced by a snap-in process. Shelves or hangars for displaying the goods could then by located into the inserts.
[6] In the relevant period Design & Display sold the slatted panels in two ways. First, it sold the panels with inserts separately for subsequent assembly by the customer. At the trial these were referred to as 'unincorporated' panels and inserts. Secondly, Design & Display sold pre-assembled displays of which the panels with inserts were part. These were referred to as 'incorporated' panels and inserts. In addition, some unincorporated inserts were sold without slatted panels.
[7] Design & Display did not itself make the inserts but purchased them from an aluminium extruder in the form of lengths which were cut into sections to make the individual inserts. The panels were purchased in the form of plain MDF panels into which the slots were machined by Design & Display."
Profits due to Abbott on Design & Display's sale of panels
The law
The Court of Appeal set out the overall task of a court when deciding which part of the profits made by the infringer in the course of his infringing business fall due to the patentee. Lewison LJ, with whom the Chancellor of the High Court and Tomlinson LJ agreed, said:
"[7] Section 61(1)(d) of the Patents Act 1977 entitles a patentee to claim against an infringer an account of the profits 'derived by him from the infringement'. An account of profits is confined to profits actually made, its purpose being not to punish the defendant but to prevent his unjust enrichment. The underlying theory is that the infringer is treated as having carried on his business (to the extent that it infringes) on behalf of the patentee. The broad principle is that the patentee is entitled to profits that have been earned by the use of his invention. If the patentee does not recover those profits, the infringer will have been unjustly enriched. So the purpose of the account is to quantify the extent to which the infringer would be unjustly enriched if he were to retain the profits derived by him from the infringement. That requires the fact finder first to identify the patentee's invention and second to decide what (if any) profits the infringer derived from the use of that invention. The second of these questions may give rise to difficulty where the infringer sells products associated with the subject matter of the patent (often called 'convoyed goods') or products into which the subject matter of the patent is incorporated. The court must determine what profit has been earned, in a legal sense, by the infringer's wrongful acts. It is clear, then, that an account of profits looks at the facts through the lens of what the infringer has done; and what the patentee might have suffered by way of loss in the real world is irrelevant."
Thus, there are broadly two steps:
(1) Identify the invention.
(2) Identify the profits (if any) made by the defendant from his use of the invention, taking into account convoyed goods and/or products into which the subject matter of the invention is incorporated.
Identifying the invention
I begin with section 125(1) of the Patents Act 1977:
" 125(1) For the purposes of this Act an invention for a patent for which an application has been made or for which a patent has been granted shall, unless the context otherwise requires, be taken to be that specified in a claim of the specification of the application or patent, as the case may be, …"
Generally speaking, an invention disclosed in a patent will be that which is set out in a claim. All the claims of the Patent are product claims for "A display panel…" with stated characteristics of the panel including the presence of an insert which itself has stated features. All the claims after claim 1 are dependent upon claim 1.
At first glance the answer to the first issue remitted by the Court of Appeal is self-evident. The inventions claimed are panels and panels are what Design & Display sold, so it should account for its profits on panels, including the inserts. However, in an inquiry as to damages or an account of profits it is necessary to focus on the 'invention' in a narrower sense.
In the first account judgment I discussed the relationship with the invention as claimed and an account of profits (at [19]–[21]. I suggested that looking at the claims was not useful. I therefore distinguished the invention from the inventive concept:
"[26] Abbott claim the profit made by Design & Display from the sale of panels in which infringing inserts were incorporated. There is no doubt that such panels were infringing products – see claim 1 of the Patent. But as I have said, that is not a useful guide to the scope of the account. I must consider the inventive concept."
In the present judgment, like the Court of Appeal I will for brevity use the word 'invention' to mean the narrower idea of the inventive concept.
Generally, as one progresses down the list of claims in a patent the matter set out in each claim becomes successively more extensive and the scope of the monopoly correspondingly more confined. Lewison LJ referred (at [8]) to Laddie J's example of a new form of tin whistle in Celanese International Corp v BP Chemicals Ltd [1999] RPC 203. Laddie J hypothesised at [51]:
"Claim 1 is for the tin whistle. Claim 10 is for a funnel to which the new tin whistle is connected. Claim 15 is for a battleship with a funnel to which the tin whistle is connected."
The invention in Laddie J's example is neither a battleship, nor a funnel, nor even a tin whistle. It would probably be some aspect of the tin whistle – in the first account judgment I pursued the example (at [20]) by suggesting that it could be a new shape of part of the interior of the whistle which makes it louder.
In every real case the invention, in this precise sense, must be identified.
Identifying the profits made by the defendant from his use of the invention
In his paragraph 7 (see above) Lewison LJ pointed out why the identification of relevant profits may not be straightforward, given that the invention may form only part of the articles sold by the infringer and/or because it may be that convoyed goods must be considered.
Lewison LJ said that this part of the court's task turned on causation:
"[14] Having identified the inventive concept of the patent, it is then necessary to address the question of causation. It has been consistently said that an assessment of damages for patent infringement and the taking of an account of profits proceed on a common principle of legal causation: Celanese International Corp v BP Chemicals at [37] (citing Imperial Oil v Lubrizol [1966] 71 CPR (3d) 26). But the question whether an infringement has caused a loss (in the legal sense) and the question whether the infringer has derived a profit from the infringement are different questions. Mr Cuddigan QC submitted that the question of causation was to be answered as a matter of common sense, relying on Gerber Garment Technology Inc v Lectra Systems Ltd [1997] RPC 443. However, as Lord Hoffmann pointed out in Environment Agency (formerly National Rivers Authority)...
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