Penhallurick (claimant/appellant) –v- MD5 Ltd (respondent)
Tuesday 2nd – Wednesday 3rd November 2021
By Appellant’s Notice filed on 18 May 2021, the Claimant/Appellant (C) seeks permission to appeal from the Order of HHJ Hacon sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court in Intellectual Property Enterprise Court dated 27 April 2021, dismissing the C’s claim.
Background
The C’s claim was that the Defendant (D) had infringed C’s copyright in 8 works. They all relate to a forensic IT investigation technique developed and written by C and known as virtual forensic computing (VFC). The most important of the Works are the versions of the VFC source code (the First, Third, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Works). The other Works were an object code, graphical user interface and user guide relating to VFC.
Dismissing the claim, HHJ Hacon (a) found that the First and Second Works either did not exist or had been abandoned; (b) found that the Third to Sixth Works had been created by C in the course of his employment by D, such that D had been the first owner of copyright in them; (c) found that, if D had not been the first owner of copyright in the Third to Eight Works, such copyrights had been assigned by C to D under the terms of an agreement of November 2008; and (d) rejected D’s counterclaims that C had (i) breached his contract of employment and (ii) infringed D’s copyrights.
C seeks to appeal against the judge’s findings in relation to (a), (b) and (c) above.
Lower Court Judgment:
Penhallurick v MD5 Ltd [2021] EWHC 293 (IPEC) (15 February 2021) (bailii.org)
View hearing:
Day 1
Day 2