INTRODUCTION
Many British Commonwealth countries have legislative provisions that address unjustified threats of intellectual property infringement. Such provisions reflect obligations under international law. The origin of these unjustified threats provisions, though, can be traced earlier to s 32 of the United Kingdom’s (UK) Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks Act 1883 (1883 Act). Section 32 introduced a statutory right of action for persons aggrieved by groundless threats of patent infringement proceedings. The aim of the legislature in introducing s 32 was to prevent, and compensate for, the damage caused by patent owners using the threat of issuing proceedings to hang over the heads of competitors or their customers, paralysing their business. Section 32 was effectively ‘designed to induce’ a patent owner to bring proceedings, enabling the question of infringement to be resolved one way or the other …
Rob Batty, The waning of protection against unjustified threats in Aotearoa | New Zealand: time for a rethink?, King’s Law Journal volume 37, 2026 – issue 1, pp 152-178. Published online: 24 July 2025.
Leave a Reply