Please find attached a Note and link to the case of Woodland v Essex County Council [2013] UKSC 66 recently decided in the Supreme Court; extending the ambit of the educational authority’s liability (via the educational function of the schools) to school pupils for personal injury (in this tragic case, catastrophic hypoxic brain injury) on the basis of the educational authority’s ‘non-delegable’ duty of care.

The extension (or if preferred, redefinition) of the educational authority’s non-delegable duty now covers the negligence of independent contractors engaged in work that the schools would ordinarily have carried out themselves (usually via their direct employees) – in this case swimming lessons to primary school pupils. Swimming lessons, were on the available evidence, part of the national curriculum. The case, replete with tragic consequences, will be remitted back to the High Court for trial, but the Supreme Court in its judgment appears to have found the Defendant with the ‘deepest pocket’ for the Claimant to bring an action against.

Click to access UKSC_2012_0093_PressSummary.pdf

Click to access UKSC_2012_0093_Judgment.pdf

Please note that the Patents County Court, (out of which the Judgments of the prolific Justice Birss emerge), is now called ‘the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court’. A significant ‘brand’change? The Court certainly addresses other infringements than just patent monopolies – including copyright, database rights infringement, trade mark and breaches of confidence to name a few. The ‘Intellectual Property Enterprise Court’ captures the wider miscellany of intellectual property rights.

The attached link takes you to the Court website and the Patents County Court Guide and the Guide to the Small Claims Track of the Patents County Court.

http://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/rcj-rolls-building/patents-county-court

Authorship and Ownership of CopyrightIn response to a recent enquiry, as to who owns copyright in published works, including academic publications, the three main provisions of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 are attached; (sections 9 to 11) which are the best starting point. Pursuant to section 9, the ‘author’ means the person who creates it, in the case of literary works, the author is taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken – in the University setting, is likely to be the Academic.

Section 10 addresses joint authorship, which means a work ‘produced by the collaboration of two or more authors in which the contribution of each author is ‘not distinct’ from that of the other author or authors. Section 11, the final section in the triumvirate confirms that the ‘author’ is the first owner of any copyright in it, subject to the important provision in section 11(2) that literary works etc made by employees in the course of employment, the employer is the first owner. The attached three sections is a good starting point for addressing prima facie ownership in copyright.

CK0207VolkswagenvGarciaBlog

The unreported case before Justice Birss, involving two Universities (one English, and one Dutch) has now been reported and is available on the www.bailii.org legal authorities website. The previous comment (when the decision was unavailable) is re-attached here. Further comment will follow upon reading Justice Birss’ judgment.

The decision of Justice Birss in Volkswagen v Garcia can be read at:

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2013/1832.html&query=volkswagen+and+v+and+garcia&method=boolean

Please find the attached Note on the above case of Euromark v Smash Enterprises Pty Ltd [2013] EWHC 1627 which concludes that what the parties conclude as to the jurisdiction governing the agreement is usually final; merits have little say in the matter. The case itself however explores this more fully, and is worth a read.

CK2908Exclusivejurisdictionclauses

The case of Euromark can be found at:

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2013/1627.html&query=smash+and+enterprises&method=boolean