GOOD NEWS FOR FINNISH TREES

Good news for Finnish trees

Above: trees anxiously awaiting to discover whether they are going
to be pulped for paper consumed in Ultraframe judgments

A two-man Court of Appeal for England and Wales (Lord Justice Jacob and Lord Justice Waller) today refused permission to appeal in all five rulings of Mr Justice Lewison in Ultraframe v Fielding and others. This was once upon a time an intellectual property dispute, but it has been going on for so long, becoming increasingly complex, that the IPKat - who thinks it was something to do with an IP licence - doubts that even most IP enthusiasts can remember what it was all about in the first place. To set the scene, Jacob LJ says:

"These are five applications for permission to appeal. They all concern judgments of Lewison J given in a dispute conducted by both sides as if it were a State trial. He heard and determined the main dispute. It took over 90 hearing days and his judgment runs to 1929 paragraphs covering 487 pages. He also heard and determined related disputes and those consequential on his main judgment".

Presumably the applicants for leave to appeal aren't going to take this lying down. They must be sharpening their pencils in readiness to petition the House of Lords. The IPKat can just imagine how many trees must be readied for pulping if even more pages of law result from this litigation. Merpel says, we should go over to a more French style of judgment: cut out all that lengthy reasoning and go straight from the arguments to the ruling. There might be more appeals, but it would certainly provide a lot less for busy lawyers to read ...

Another complicated UK dispute over an IP licence here
Another dispute that should never have been allowed to boil over here
Other litigation involving Ultraframe here, here, here, here and here