Friday June 5th 2009, by Piers Strickland
In the case of Tns Group Holdings Limited V Nielsen Media Research, Inc, the High Court of England and Wales held that, pursuant to the words “any person” in s.72(1) of the Patents Act 1977, the intention of the applicant in a revocation action was irrelevant. Therefore, it was not an abuse of process to bring the revocation action even if there had been no sufficient commercial reason to do so. This makes sense given that, as a matter of public policy, patent monopolies should be vulnerable to wide scale challenge.
The Claimant admitted intention was to use a finding of invalidty from an English Court in other European jurisdictions. The Honourable Mr Justice Arnold, of the High Court, held that such a motive was legitimate, as consistency of decisions was desirable. The Judge also refused to stay the action pending opposition proceedings in the European Patent Office (“EPO”), following the principles laid down in Glaxo v Genentech, because the EPO proceedings would take at least two years longer than a final decision in the UK courts.
