The Patents Court (Shenzhen Carku Technology Co Ltd v The NOCO Company [2022] EWHC 2034 (Pat)) considered whether a complaint made to Amazon by the patent owner using Amazon’s UK IPR complaints procedure in relation to the claimant’s relevant products was a threat of patent infringement.
Patent Law and Patent Litigation is a highly specialised and technical area and indeed not something which Steven Mather Solicitor usually deals with. However, this case is a potential warning to patent holders looking to make complaints to platforms like Amazon.
One of the quirks in Patent Law is that unlike most IP claims where lawyers fire off really robust letters of claim, in Patent Law you cannot make “unjustified threats” and if you do, as a patent holder, you can be held liable to pay the other party damages.
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the question of whether a communication was a threat had to be considered objectively;
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threats did not need to be express;
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whether a communication amounted to a threat depended on how it would be understood by an ordinary reasonable person in the position of the actual recipient;
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in order to be a person aggrieved by a threat, the claimant had to show that its commercial interests had been, or were likely to be, adversely affected in a real, as opposed to a fanciful or minimal, way
Written by Steven Mather, a business solicitor acting on company sales and purchases. This is general information about the law, not legal advice on your situation.
