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United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions >> Vatina Services Limited and Jonathan King (Patent) [2003] UKIntelP o20903 (18 July 2003) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKIntelP/2003/o20903.html Cite as: [2003] UKIntelP o20903 |
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For the whole decision click here: o20903
Summary
On acquiring Vatina's rights in the application for the patent from Mr Barber, Ms du-Rose agreed that Mr Barber would notify the patent agent, who prosecuted the application and the Patent Office about the acquisition rather than do it herself. However, Mr Barber did not carry out this task and so Ms du-Rose, who took over responsibility for the patent, never received any reminders about the renewal fee which remained unpaid. The Hearing Officer remarked that the act of seeing that a renewal fee is paid in the period it could be paid, is not confined to action in the period itself. In this regard, he found it was unreasonable for Ms du-Rose to continue, for well over two years prior to the period for paying the fee, to accepting Mr Barber's assurances that all was well without attempting herself to obtain confirmatory evidence and in view of the difficulties Mr Barber was having communicating with the patent agent. The Hearing Officer also felt that Ms du-Rose's decision not to attempt to notify the agent and the Office herself, for fear of jeopardising her business relationship with Mr Barber, could not be viewed as taking reasonable care. Moreover, the Hearing Officer was not persuaded that the stress Ms du-Rose was experiencing was not such as to prevent her acting in a reasonable manner.
