Law Report: Case Summaries

Sunday 16 October 1994 23:02 BST
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The following notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

Adoption Re G(a minor); CA(Balcombe, Hirst, Simon Brown LJJ); 4 Oct 1994.

Where a child was placed for adoption in contravention of s 11(1) of the Adoption Act 1976 an adoption order could still be made. However, in such circumstances only the High Court could do so. Accordingly, if the adoption application was made in the county court, the proceedings were 'appropriate for determination in the High Court' within para 12 of the Children (Allocation of Proceedings) Order 1991 (SI no 1677) and should be transferred to the High Court.

Jonathan Bennett (Furley Page Fielding & Barton, Canterbury) for the applicants; Maureen Mullally (Nicholas Bennett & Co, Sandwich) or the second respondent; Glenn Brasse (Gardner & Croft, Canterbury) for the guardian ad litem.

Crime R v Slater; CA(Crim Div)(Rose LJ, Holland, Kay JJ); 17 Aug 1994.

The need for a Turnbull direction warning of the dangers of identification evidence (1977) QB 223 arose where there is a possibility of a mistaken identification, that is, whether the defendant was present and a witness claims to identify him on the basis of a previous sighting. In such a case it is essential that the jury examines each of the relevant sightings with care and they should be directed to do so in accordance with Turnbull.

Where there is no issue as to the defendant's presence at or near the scene of the offence, but the issue is what he was doing, it does not automatically follow a Turnbull direction should be given. It will be necessary where, on the evidence, the possibility exists that a witness may have mistaken one person for another.

Michael M Smith (Registrar of Criminal Appeals) for the appellant; Jonathon Dee (CPS) for the Crown.

Passing off Hodgkinson and Corby Ltd and anor v Wards Mobility Services Ltd; ChD (Jacob J); 20 July 1994.

Since there is no tort of copying or of taking a rival's market or customers, and deception lay at the heart of the tort of passing off, a trader could only be prevented from marketing a product if he was deceiving the public into buying it, even if the product had previously been associated with a particular trade origin.

Christopher Morcom QC and Guy Tritton (Reynolds Porter Chamberlain) for the plaintiffs; Mark Platt-Mills and Nicholas Shea (Denton Hall) for the defendant.

Patent Regina v Comptroller-General of Patents, Ex p Archibald Kenrick & Sons Ltd; QBD (Aldous J); 22 July 1994.

An application for an international patent was governed by the Patent Cooperation Treaty 1970 which was a complete code.

Under the treaty, the filing date for an application was the 'date of receipt' which meant the actual date of receipt rather than deemed delivery according to the rules of an individual state, such as the Patent Rules 1990 (SI no 2384).

Colin Birss (Winter Myerson) for the applicant; Michael Silverleaf (Treasury Solicitor) for the patent office.

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