Recent Cases

Pozzoli v BDMO

The Court of Appeal rejected an appeal by the claimant against a finding that its patent was obvious.  The claimant owned a patent relating to a certain type of CD or DVD case which employed a space-saving method of overlapping discs such that the overall size of the case was small in relation to the number of discs contained.  The defendant produced its own DVD cases which the claimant alleged infringed the patent.  The defendant countered that the patent was obvious in the light of various pieces of prior art and common general knowledge.  Lewison J agreed with the defendant, finding the patent obvious.
The Court of Appeal examined the long-standing Windsurfing approach to assessing obviousness and concluded that the approach would benefit from a re-formulation. On the facts of the case, the judge had been correct to hold that the patent was obvious.