United Kingdom courts
A UK Intellectual Property Enterprise Court judge dismisses all trademark infringement and passing-off claims by easyGroup (the entity behind easyJet, easyHotel, and related brands) against bathroom retailer Easy Bathrooms, ruling that the claimant failed to prove a legally recognisable “family of marks” and that 13 years of market coexistence demonstrated no consumer confusion.
Mr. Justice Meade ordered Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount to make interim RAND payments to Nokia for video streaming codec standard-essential patents, finding that the Nokia Lump Sum Offer was the most credible interim payment benchmark, while discounting Nokia’s claim to full royalties going back to 2011 due to its late-arriving licensing programme.
The UK Court of Appeal permanently stayed FRAND proceedings brought by Acer and Asus against Nokia, holding that Nokia’s offer to resolve standard-essential patent licensing disputes through arbitration constituted compliance with its FRAND obligations.
The UK Patents Court set a $392 million lump-sum FRAND balancing payment for a global SEP cross-license between Samsung and ZTE, largely discounting prior ZTE licenses negotiated under the shadow of U.S. sanctions as non-FRAND comparables.
The UK High Court dismissed claims by the estates of Jimi Hendrix Experience members Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, ruling that their 1966 recording agreement unambiguously assigned copyright to the producers and that prior releases barred all claims, including those related to streaming.
The UK High Court ruled that the estates of Jimi Hendrix’s bandmates Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell have no copyright ownership or performers’ property rights in approximately 40 studio recordings, finding the 1966 Recording Agreement unambiguously assigned worldwide copyright to producers.
The UK Supreme Court unanimously overturned the Court of Appeal and held that an artificial neural network for recommending media files based on emotional characteristics is patentable, abandoning the Aerotel four-step test in favor of the EPO’s broader COMVIK approach — the most significant shift in UK computer-patent law in two decades.