Court : House of Lords
lord hoffmann my lords, 1. angiotech pharmaceuticals inc, a canadian company, and the university of british columbia are joint proprietors of european patent 0 706 376 which claims, among other things, a stent coated with taxol for treating or preventing recurrent stenosis". for convenience i shall call the patentees angiotech. conor medsystems inc (conor), an american competitor, applied in both the united kingdom and the netherlands for revocation of the patent on the ground that the claimed invention was obvious. in the united kingdom, before pumfrey j and the court of appeal (mummery, tuckey and jacob ljj), it succeeded. in the netherlands, before the district court of the hague (robert van peursem, edgar brinkman and walter van straalen) it failed. angiotech appeals to your lordships house and says that the dutch court was right and that the patent should be declared valid. 2. since the decision of the court of appeal, angiotech and conor have reached a settlement. conor does not oppose angiotechs appeal. but a patent confers proprietary rights in rem and the validity of a patent cannot be established simply by a judgment in default of opposition. your lordships therefore invited the comptroller general of patents to assist the court in presenting what appeared to him to be the arguments against the validity of the patent. the house followed the procedure adopted by the court of appeal in a similar situation in halliburton energy services inc v smith international ( .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
lord hoffmann my lords, the trap grounds 1. this appeal arises out of an application on 21 june 2002 by miss catherine robinson, who lives in north oxford, to register the trap grounds as a town or village green under the commons registration act 1965. the site as it is today does not fit the traditional image of a town or village green. mr vivian chapman, a member of the bar expert in the law of commons and greens, described it in a report on the application which he wrote for the registration authority, the oxfordshire county council: "the trap grounds are nine acres of undeveloped land in north oxford. they lie between the railway to the west and the oxford canal to the east. about one third is permanently under water this part is usually called 'the reed beds'. [they] are inaccessible to ordinary walkers since access would require wading equipment. the other two thirds ['the scrubland'] are much drier and consist of some mature trees, numerous semi-mature trees and a great deal of high scrubby undergrowth, much of which is impenetrable by the hardiest walker. the scrubland is noticeably less overgrown at the southern end and there is a pond and wet areas in the central eastern part of the scrubland. throughout the dry parts of the scrubland there are piles of builders' rubble, up to about a yard high, which are mostly covered in moss and undergrowth. the trap grounds are approached from the east by a bridge over the canal. from the bridge a track, known as .....
Tag this Judgment!Court : House of Lords
lord porter my lords, this is an appeal from a judgment of the court of appeal reversing a decision of oliver j. the action under review was brought by a miss stone against the committee and members of the cheetham cricket club in respect of injuries said to be caused by their negligence in not taking steps to avoid the danger of a ball being hit out of their ground or as the result of a nuisance, dependent upon the same facts, for which they were responsible. the facts as found by the learned judge are simple and undisputed. on 9th august, 1947, miss stone, the plaintiff, was injured by a cricket ball while standing on the highway outside her house, 10, beckenham road, cheetham hill. the ball was hit by a batsman playing in a match on the cheetham cricket ground which is adjacent to the highway. she brings an action for damages against the committee and members of the clubthe striker of the ball is not a defendant. the club has been in existence, and matches regularly played on this ground, since about 1864. beckenham road was constructed and built up in 1910. for the purpose of its lay-out, the builder made an arrangement with the club that a small strip of ground at the beckenham road end should be exchanged for a strip at the other end. the match pitches have always been, and still are, kept along a line opposite the pavilion, which was the mid-line of the original ground. the effect is that for a straight drivethe hit in the case in questionbeckenham road has for some .....
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