Abstract:
The focus of this article is on accessory liability for infringement of intellectual property (“IP”) rights. In this little area of the law, the legal developments have also not been uniform and coherent. Like civil law in general, there is compartmentalisation within IP law into copyright, trade marks, patents and designs, to name but a few. This article will not only revisit how accessory liability has been determined in the other spheres of IP (particularly trade marks, patents and designs) but also consider how that liability was recently reformulated by the UK Supreme Court in Lifestyle Equities CV v Ahmed [2024] 2 WLR 1297.