New Small Claims IP Court Process

The UK Government has announced that a new small claims track will be made available in the Patents County Court (PCC) in order to help small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) protect their copyright, trade marks and designs. The new small claims process will limit the award of costs and permit damages of up to £5000 per case to be claimed.

This initiative is in response to recommendations made six months ago in an independent review of the UK intellectual property (IP) regime – the Hargreaves Review “Digital Opportunity: A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth”. Evidence presented at the Hargreaves Review had shown that  17 % of SMEs had abandoned attempts to enforce their IP rights owing to high court costs.

The issues that may be raised in patent cases can be more complex than other types of IP, and so patents are not included in this new court process. Therefore, it will still be necessary to enforce patents using either the existing PCC process or the High Court. The PCC was successfully reformed in 2010 to provide a cheaper and speedier alternative to the High Court for patents, trade marks design and copyright disputes, with a costs cap of £50,000 and a limit on recoverable damages of £500,000.

Robert McLean

24 November 2011