Trade Marks: The Microsoft Claims
Between 2005 and 2007 Microsoft issued proceedings against a number of importers and distributors of Microsoft products alleging trade mark and copyright infringement and passing off. I was instructed in several of those cases including the two that appear on the BAILII website.
Some of those cases like Microsoft Corporation v Ling and others [2006] EWHC 1619 (Ch) (3 July 2006) were over certificates of authenticity. Others were over parallel imports of genuine Microsoft products from outside the EU and their resale within Europe. Yet others were over allegedly counterfeit or pirate copies of Microsoft software. Most of those cases settled on terms that preserved my clients' businesses.
Many of those cases commenced with a combined search order and freezing injunction severely restricting the funds available for the defence of the claim. Consequently, several of those defendants came to me under the public access scheme or, in some cases, through solicitors who had limited experience of intellectual property litigation. All of them required very careful husbanding of clients' resources. As a result, I had to give very detailed advices on evidence and procedure and do much more drafting than would normally be required. In all cases our costs were a fraction of the claimant's. In one interim application our schedule of costs was 10% that of the other side's.
As a result of shrewd negotiations and carefully drafted settlement offers most of the cases were settled without the need for a hearing on terms acceptable to the clients. Word of such success got around with the result that one firm of solicitors who did a lot of these cases and I were instructed to review the work that had been done by other lawyers.
