Bond Pearce

At the start of November, the Government announced the introduction of a small claims service at the Patents County Court (PCC) to better assist small and medium sized business to protect their intellectual property rights - including patents, trade marks, designs and copyright - in a cost-effective way. The PCC small claims track will operate in a similar way to the established system in place at other County Courts.

The PCC itself has seen a number of changes over recent years, designed to streamline the way IP cases are dealt with. The PCC currently has a costs cap of £50,000 per case and a damages limit of £500,000. The new small claims service is intended to further limit fixed costs, and allow damages of up to £5,000 per case.

Evidence presented to the recent Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property indicated that around 1 in 6 SMEs in the UK had given up attempting to protect their IP rights because of the costs associated with High Court actions.  The introduction of a small claims service for lower-value IP disputes has been widely welcomed to assist business which would otherwise be deterred from enforcing their IP rights through the courts.