Patent decision

BL number

O/145/06

Concerning rights in

GB2345146

Hearing Officer

Dr J E Porter

Decision date

7 June 2006

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Dr Anthony Maddison

Provisions discussed

PA1977 section 28(3)

Keywords

Restoration

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The proprietor was self-employed and had office space at his home containing his patent files. He had instructed the renewals agency CPA to send him renewal reminder letters. Their records showed that four reminders had been sent to the proprietors address, but the proprietor could find no record of the first three of these. Neither could he find a reminder letter which had been sent from his patent agent. He contended that postal problems might account for the failure of these reminders to arrive at his address.

The fourth CPA reminder had been found, but too late to pay the renewal fee. It had been mis-filed by the proprietors partner, who had been enlisted to help with clerical matters during a period of significant disruption caused by building work at the proprietors home. The proprietor had given no specific training to his partner, but they had had a general discussion about what she could do to help him.

On the issue of the missing reminders, the hearing officer concluded on the evidence that on the balance of probabilities postal problems could not explain the absence of all three missing CPA reminders and the agents reminder letter. Thus at least some of the reminders must have arrived at the proprietors home but been lost or otherwise not dealt with. This did not demonstrate that reasonable care had been taken. He also held that it did not demonstrate reasonable care to expect the proprietors partner to distinguish between various similarly-named files and inventions without some specific training or instruction. The application for restoration was therefore refused.