This one goes out to my fellow IP students :P

Ask any law student about what they think of judges... and he/she will probably relate to you the countless times, while reading the case law, that he/she had to plod through their long-winded neverending say-it-all-in-one-breath paragraphs of 'wisdom'. (phew that was a mouthful!)

I even suspect that in order to qualify as a full-fledged judge, one must first, have certain level of cheong-hei-ness. This of course, makes it a fucking pain in the ass to read full-judgments... which sometimes(quite often actually) can span over a hundred pages.

But on rare occasions, you do sometimes find little gems buried among all the legal jargon... and while hacking away at my Intellectual Property assignment, i actually burst out laughing (not once, but twice!) while reading cases!

Judges and their sense of humor...

Here, in the case of United Biscuits (the McVities' company!) v Asda Stores, Mcvities was trying to sue Asda, a supermarket, for making a pirated version of their Penguin biscuits. I dunno how many of you will find this funny, but there's just something so inherently fucking funny about Penguins XD

Behold the great wisdom of Justice Robert Walker:

"I must try to summarise their general appearance and relate it to other registered trade marks which I have yet to mention. But first I should perhaps briefly record my judicial notice of relevant ornithology. Penguins are seabirds of the family of spheniscidae. There are many different varieties of different sizes but they all live in the southern hemisphere, on or close to Antarctica. Relatively few people have therefore seen them in their natural habitat but most people are familiar with them from wildlife films (and television advertisements for Penguins). Their outstanding characteristics are that they cannot fly at all, their progress on land (normally ice) appears to be ungainly, and they are most at home in the sea, where they propel their streamlined bodies with both sets of flippers, while insulated against the cold by ample layers of fat. They are more or less black with white fronts, though their plumage contains some fairly vivid yellow, especially around the neck.

A puffin (and I am here anticipating the next section of this judgment) is a seabird whose scientific name is fratercula arctia. It is also sometimes called a sea parrot because of its large, multi-coloured beak which is its most distinctive feature. It is more or less black but with a white front and a large and distinctive white patch around its eye, a little reminiscent of a clown. It is about the size of a pigeon; certainly a good deal smaller than normal varieties of penguin. It lives on the Atlantic coast of north-west Europe, from Brittany to North Cape, and extending to Iceland. It can fly, and has to do so to get to and from its nesting-places on cliffs and rocks. (I should perhaps add that I doubt whether the average member of the general public knows much more about the puffin than that it is a seabird with a multi-coloured beak; my own knowledge has been supplemented considerably from a handbook which counsel showed me.)"

"It is convenient to mention here two earlier occasions on which the name of a bird other than a penguin (but beginning with P and ending with N) has been used for countline biscuits. In the late 1960's or early 1970's Tesco sold a biscuit called Puffin (not made by any company now in United Biscuits). It was sold in a red and white six-pack with a crude picture hardly reminiscent of any known bird (this one cracked me up as well). At some time between the late 1960's and the early 1980's McVities made an own-label biscuit called Pelican for Marks and Spencer. It had a picture of a purple pelican on a blue wrapping. Neither of these products was challenged by United Biscuits or its predecessors. Neither seems to have lasted long."

I guess if you guys havent read case law before, you wont understand exactly why this is so funny afterall.... but i really never expected to read about Penguins and Puffins and Pelicans in a JUDGMENT!!!

Anyway, the second case, Reckitts v Colman, is about this:


Yup! I bought a Jif Lemon because i couldnt resist after reading this case XD
And yeah you probably guessed it, the defendant tried to copy the Jif Lemon design and got sued.

This time, it's Justice Walton:

"So I consider that the evidence establishes beyond the slightest peradventure that the effect of the introduction of any of the defendants' lemons onto the market would be bound to result in many housewives purchasing them in the belief that they were obtaining the well known and liked Jif brand. I so describe it because many of the housewives who gave evidence before me knew of the brand from their mothers having used it, and indeed from the whole family having enjoyed it. All as a wholly satisfactory culinary delight; the more turbulent members of the family having also made use of the lemon when empty as a first class water pistol."

If you found neither of the above funny, then it goes to show how dreary law can be, that we have to derive our entertainment from stupid things like these. But whatever it is, i guess i need to thank the 2 wisemen for brightening up, for a brief moment, these long dark winter nights.

This one goes out to my fellow IP students :P

Ask any law student about what they think of judges... and he/she will probably relate to you the countless times, while reading the case law, that he/she had to plod through their long-winded neverending say-it-all-in-one-breath paragraphs of 'wisdom'. (phew that was a mouthful!)

I even suspect that in order to qualify as a full-fledged judge, one must first, have certain level of cheong-hei-ness. This of course, makes it a fucking pain in the ass to read full-judgments... which sometimes(quite often actually) can span over a hundred pages.

But on rare occasions, you do sometimes find little gems buried among all the legal jargon... and while hacking away at my Intellectual Property assignment, i actually burst out laughing (not once, but twice!) while reading cases!

Judges and their sense of humor...

Here, in the case of United Biscuits (the McVities' company!) v Asda Stores, Mcvities was trying to sue Asda, a supermarket, for making a pirated version of their Penguin biscuits. I dunno how many of you will find this funny, but there's just something so inherently fucking funny about Penguins XD

Behold the great wisdom of Justice Robert Walker:

"I must try to summarise their general appearance and relate it to other registered trade marks which I have yet to mention. But first I should perhaps briefly record my judicial notice of relevant ornithology. Penguins are seabirds of the family of spheniscidae. There are many different varieties of different sizes but they all live in the southern hemisphere, on or close to Antarctica. Relatively few people have therefore seen them in their natural habitat but most people are familiar with them from wildlife films (and television advertisements for Penguins). Their outstanding characteristics are that they cannot fly at all, their progress on land (normally ice) appears to be ungainly, and they are most at home in the sea, where they propel their streamlined bodies with both sets of flippers, while insulated against the cold by ample layers of fat. They are more or less black with white fronts, though their plumage contains some fairly vivid yellow, especially around the neck.

A puffin (and I am here anticipating the next section of this judgment) is a seabird whose scientific name is fratercula arctia. It is also sometimes called a sea parrot because of its large, multi-coloured beak which is its most distinctive feature. It is more or less black but with a white front and a large and distinctive white patch around its eye, a little reminiscent of a clown. It is about the size of a pigeon; certainly a good deal smaller than normal varieties of penguin. It lives on the Atlantic coast of north-west Europe, from Brittany to North Cape, and extending to Iceland. It can fly, and has to do so to get to and from its nesting-places on cliffs and rocks. (I should perhaps add that I doubt whether the average member of the general public knows much more about the puffin than that it is a seabird with a multi-coloured beak; my own knowledge has been supplemented considerably from a handbook which counsel showed me.)"

"It is convenient to mention here two earlier occasions on which the name of a bird other than a penguin (but beginning with P and ending with N) has been used for countline biscuits. In the late 1960's or early 1970's Tesco sold a biscuit called Puffin (not made by any company now in United Biscuits). It was sold in a red and white six-pack with a crude picture hardly reminiscent of any known bird (this one cracked me up as well). At some time between the late 1960's and the early 1980's McVities made an own-label biscuit called Pelican for Marks and Spencer. It had a picture of a purple pelican on a blue wrapping. Neither of these products was challenged by United Biscuits or its predecessors. Neither seems to have lasted long."

I guess if you guys havent read case law before, you wont understand exactly why this is so funny afterall.... but i really never expected to read about Penguins and Puffins and Pelicans in a JUDGMENT!!!

Anyway, the second case, Reckitts v Colman, is about this:


Yup! I bought a Jif Lemon because i couldnt resist after reading this case XD
And yeah you probably guessed it, the defendant tried to copy the Jif Lemon design and got sued.

This time, it's Justice Walton:

"So I consider that the evidence establishes beyond the slightest peradventure that the effect of the introduction of any of the defendants' lemons onto the market would be bound to result in many housewives purchasing them in the belief that they were obtaining the well known and liked Jif brand. I so describe it because many of the housewives who gave evidence before me knew of the brand from their mothers having used it, and indeed from the whole family having enjoyed it. All as a wholly satisfactory culinary delight; the more turbulent members of the family having also made use of the lemon when empty as a first class water pistol."

If you found neither of the above funny, then it goes to show how dreary law can be, that we have to derive our entertainment from stupid things like these. But whatever it is, i guess i need to thank the 2 wisemen for brightening up, for a brief moment, these long dark winter nights.