Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights In the United Kingdom

INTRODUCTION The United Kingdom comprises a number of separate jurisdictions. In broad terms these are England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Substantive rules of intellectual property (IP) law are generally harmonised in the UK but procedural regimes can vary somewhat, with particular differences in procedure between England and Wales on the one hand, and Scotland on the other. References to the UK, England and Scotland in this chapter should be understood accordingly (with references to England covering both England and Wales). The terms “United Kingdom” (“UK”) and “England” are not synonymous. Procedurally, the focus of this chapter is on England and Wales, as the UK jurisdiction in which the majority of IP litigation takes place. Scotland remains a significant jurisdiction, however, and there may be cases where Scotland is the appropriate jurisdiction for IP infringement proceedings, particularly where Scotland is the location of the acts of alleged infringement in question. NATIONAL LAW IMPLEMENTING THE ENFORCEMENT DIRECTIVE A. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY LAW Changes to substantive UK law to ensure implementation of the Enforcement Directive were implemented by the Intellectual Property (Enforcement, etc.) Regulations 2006 (SI 2006 No. 1028) (the “IP Enforcement Regulations 2006”), which came into force on 29th April 2006. In addition, changes to the Civil Procedure Rules (“CPR”), applicable to proceedings in England and Wales (and in particular changes to Rule 25 dealing with interim remedies), were introduced as part of the 41st update of those Rules (the Civil Procedure (Amendment No. 4) Rules 2005 (SI 2005/1315)), which came into force on 6th April 2006. B. TRANSPOSITION ISSUES According to the UK government, the provisions of the Enforcement Directive, although representing EU best practice were in large part derived from UK law, thus the changes necessary to implement the Enforcement Directive were relatively minor. No express provision was made for any change in the law by reason of Articles 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14 and 17 to 22 of the Enforcement Directive. The Regulations did provide for changes to the Registered Designs Act 1949, granting an exclusive licensee of a UK-registered design the same rights and remedies as the proprietor.