Patents provide protection and encouragement to inventiveness and novelty, not to obvious developments of others’ ideas. The Court of Appeal made that point in finding invalid a patent in respect of wind turbine arrays. A company had patented a method of operating pitch-controlled wind turbines
Owners of listed buildings are entrusted to keep them in a reasonable state of repair and a failure to do so can have grave consequences. In one case, a woman whose 17th century manor house had fallen into a state of near-dereliction received just £125,000
Unlawful planning permissions are regularly overturned by judges, and those who pre-empt their decisions by carrying out developments prematurely do so at their own risk. In one such case, however, the High Court found that a council was justified in refusing to take immediate enforcement
Product liability and professional indemnity insurance policies invariably require that any potential claims must be swiftly notified to the insurer, but what exactly does that mean? The Court of Appeal has considered the issue in an important test case. The case concerned a company that
The location of a company’s registered office is not always an indication of where it has its centre of main interest (COMI). The issue can be of crucial importance to insolvency practitioners, as one High Court case revealed. The case concerned three companies that were
Employers are fully entitled to take a very dim view of violence in the workplace – but, when considering what action to take, each case must be considered on its own facts. In one case, a worker who lost his job following an angry office
Many housing estates are subject to restrictive covenants for the benefit of present and future residents and they can act as a control mechanism on development that is just as effective as the planning system. In one case that illustrated the point, a planning consent
Commercial contracts often endure harmoniously for many years, but their very longevity can make termination even more acrimonious. That was certainly so in the case of an employment agency that provided staff to a retailer for more than 20 years prior to its replacement following
In a case that will be required reading for anyone working in the hospitality industry, the Court of Appeal has ruled in the context of a holiday food poisoning case that, when food is served, or taken from a buffet and put on a plate,
Many housing estates, particularly those built in the 1960s, are looking tired and no longer meet modern living requirements. However, as one High Court case showed, their regeneration presents a major challenge for local authorities. The case concerned a low density urban estate of 360
