Endangered species: IP court to be moved for its own good?

This Kat is officially off-blog for a couple of days while he attends to various pressing commitments, but sometimes things happen which send him flying back to the blogosphere for whole minutes at a time.  This is one such episode.

Via the excellent Arty Rajendra and Louise Butler (both of Rouse) comes what appears to be rather more than a rumour to the effect that something is happening to the Patents County Court (PCC) for England and Wales. Indeed, to the uninformed observer, it rather looks as if this highly successful experiment in lower-cost, user-friendly, rapid and pretty decent IP litigation for SMEs and individuals is about to be sucked into the High Court. No doubt the Great and the Good, who make these decisions on our behalf, made every attempt to consult not only the IPKat but also Merpel, but they must have been out at the time, possibly at the Old Nick (where they will next be on Tuesday 12 February, from 5.15pm till around 6.30pm, if  you'd like to join them).

Arty and Louise explain:

"The position, as we understand it is as follows:

* The Crime & Courts Bill will merge all the County Courts (which are currently regarded as separate courts) into one legal entity, which will be known as the County Court (Schedule 9 of the Bill).

* In relation to specialist County Courts, there are a number of amendments which repeal existing provisions providing for specific county courts with specialist jurisdictions. These specialist jurisdictions will instead be conferred on the single County Court. Unfortunately, there is no specific mention of the PCC.

'PCC' has other meanings too ...

The Bill doesn’t contain any references to abolishing the PCC. However, one of our sources at the PCC (not Judge Birss QC) has confirmed that the PCC is going to be re-constituted as part of the Chancery Division of the High Court. Further, the Bill proposes that all references to the PCC are removed from existing IP legislation and the meaning of ‘court’ contained in IP legislation will be amended to refer to the High Court only. What this will mean in practice is unclear. We understand that the change is likely to take effect in October 2013".

The Kats are now in a position to add a little information of their own. As they understand it, the PCC has to be moved for its own good. If it were left where it was, it would be governed by the new rules and regulations for the freshly-revamped and redecorated County Court -- and this would make it somewhere between difficult and impossible to carry on in its current, much-loved form. A corollary of this is that, as a de facto County Court functioning as part of the High Court, it will need a new name. Aware that the United Kingdom has had its share of retail failures in recent weeks, The IPKat thought it might be fun to recycle one of the newly-distressed brands for judicial purposes. How about the Blockbuster Court? Readers are invited to offer their own suggestions.

Merpel notes that Judge Birss's position is a slightly curious one, in that he seems to be hovering somewhere between the Patents County Court and the bit of the High Court which we know and love as the Patents Court. She thinks he'll jolly well have to be promoted, thus providing not only a reward for user-friendly competence but also an incentive to whoever takes over at the ex-PCC that, even if a leopard can't change its spots, a County Court judge can gain promotion to the High Court.