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No excitement after 8pm

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

The IPKat can now reveal that leave to appeal to the House of Lords has been refused in Eli Lilly and Company and others v 8PM Chemist Limited. This was the case in which 8PM enabled US patients to obtain cheap prescription drugs from Turkey via a rather circuitous route which passed through the UK, where Eli Lilly had some trade marks which, it considered, this trade route infringed. At first instance Mann J was willing to continue an injunction in force against 8PM even though the offending drugs weren't placed on the market in the UK, since there was at least an arguable case of infringement on the facts (see note here). The Court of Appeal disagreed and discharged the injunction. Regarding this decision the IPKat said

"The IPKat can't fault the reasoning of the Court of Appeal, but he feels unhappy at the result. ... [A]ny set of rules that requires such a roundabout business model in order to comply with the formal rules relating to trade mark infringement creates the impression that something dodgy is being done".

Merpel says, can anyone remember the name of the person concerning whom it was once said:

"His idea of excitement is to eat an After Eight at 7.45"?

Full post as published by IPKat on July 06, 2008 (boomark / email).