Kicking a man when he’s down?

It’s no secret that estate agents are having a tough time in the current market, with the credit crunch popping the property bubble. However, the Court of Appeal might be accused of putting the boot in to an already stricken estate agent, Foxtons, in a case reported recently.

In The Office of Fair Trading -v- Foxtons Limited, the Court of Appeal has allowed an appeal by the OFT against a ruling in the High Court that the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 do not apply to existing contracts, even if a term has been ruled to be unfair. [2009] EWCA Civ 288

This is a very important decision. It means that where the OFT successfully challenges a consumer supplier’s standard terms in court, it can obtain an injunction from the court against the supplier enforcing any unfair terms.  In effect, any term ruled to be unfair ceases to be enforceable by the supplier, even in existing contracts.

It's a rapstrap, and you've been caught

Fans of the Boomtown Rats may not be aware that the Intellectual Property Office (formerly the Patent Office) has for a number of years provided an opinion service, which enables anyone to test their case for patent infringement before commencing expensive litigation.

However, fans of the BBC TV programme Dragons’ Den probably will, following the opinion from the IPO concerning Rapstrap.  Unbelievably, the inventor of the Rapstrap cable tie, who secured £150k of investment from the dragons Duncan Bannatyne and James Caan in August 2008, appears to have infringed a patent for a product he invented whilst in the employment of another company.

This begs at least a couple of questions:

• what IP due diligence was carried out prior to the dragons making their investment in Rapstrap?
• what does the investment agreement say about any prior art/IPRs?