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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Decisions >> (1) Hydra -Ject Services UK Limited and (2) Robert Peter Enston v Eric James Enston (Patent) [2004] UKIntelP o20604 (8 July 2004) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKIntelP/2004/o20604.html Cite as: [2004] UKIntelP o20604 |
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For the whole decision click here: o20604
Summary
These three related patent applications are concerned with vibrating stuck valves in order to free them. The hearing officer concluded that the claim in the patents for applying vibration to a valve component (which could have included hitting it with hammer) was over-broad and could not be regarded as representing the invention. Rather, the invention lay in the idea of attaching a vibratory source to the valve.
The claimants asserted that the second claimant (Peter Enston) was the inventor, not his brother Eric. The hearing officer dismissed this claim, finding the assertion that Peter had thought of using ultrasonics before the date of the first patent application unproven, and also finding that even if Peter had, as he asserted, freed a valve in the Philippines by 'shocking' it, that was not the invention.
In the alternative, the claimants’ asserted that if Eric had invented it, he did so whilst still an employee of the first claimant. The hearing officer dismissed this too, finding that Eric had probably never been an employee, but even if he had, his employment had ceased by the relevant time because he was no longer receiving any money from the company.
The day before the hearing the claimants had tried to introduce a new pleading - that as a director Eric owed a fiduciary duty to the company irrespective of the provisions of section 39. Because it had come in so very late and would require further evidence, at the hearing the hearing officer had refused to allow this argument to be run.