Patent decision

BL number

O/121/07

Concerning rights in

EP(UK) 0570903

Hearing Officer

Mr P Hayward

Decision date

9 May 2007

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

GMC Tools (UK) Ltd v Makita Corporation

Provisions discussed

PA 1977 section 117

Keywords

Correction, Stay of proceedings

Related Decisions

None

Summary

The patent was subject to a revocation action in the Patents County Court, due to come to trial in just under 4 weeks. The proprietors (Makita) sought to correct an alleged mistake and were anxious for this to be resolved before the trial of the revocation action. The applicants for revocation, GMC, opposed the request and asked for the correction proceedings to be stayed until the revocation action had been disposed of.

The hearing officer rejected GMC’s argument that the issues in the revocation and correction actions overlapped and felt that the chances of unnecessary duplication and/or inconsistent conclusions were small. Nevertheless, he was concerned that it would not be possible to dispose of the correction request before the trial of the revocation action without riding roughshod over GMC’s rights, and felt that failure to complete the correction action before the trial would have only a limited effect on the revocation action. As it was possible that the revocation action would effectively dispose of the correction action, he concluded that the balance lay in favour of granting a stay.