PMS International Cow Kiddee Case - Kids Travel Case

Product Information

For an article to infringe a registered design, it should not produce a different overall impression on an informed user. Magmatic’s chief executive and founder, Rob Law, said the company was “devastated and bewildered” by this judgment. If you want to discuss a particular case, then one of our registered design experts would be happy to help.

The Court dismissed the appeal filed by Magmatic, owners of the Community registered design (CRD) for Trunki ride-on suitcases, and thereby left intact the Court of Appeal's holding that PMS's Kiddee case did not infringe. Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, designs, info-tech, privacy and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective.

In the long-running tussle, Magmatic, the Bristol-based company behind Trunki cases, argues that Kiddee case luggage infringes on its registered design rights. Both Lewison J ([2007] FSR 13) and the Court of Appeal held, as Jacob LJ put it at [2008] FSR 8, para 40, that “[t]he registration is evidently for a shape. On Dragon’s Den, where Law tried to launch the product, Peter Jones warned the creator that the design was unprotectable. This constituted an important difference between the overall impression given by each suitcase, and contributed to the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Kiddee Case did not infringe the Trunki RCD [see paras 21, 37 and 39]. g. its colouring and spots) also influenced the overall impression it created: in one design to give the impression of a ladybird with antennae, in another a tiger with ears.

Magmatic’s chief executive and founder, Rob Law, stated the company was “devastated and bewildered” by this decision. Yesterday the UK Supreme Court decided ( here) that a range of animal-themed ride-on suitcases (the Kiddee Case) do not infringe a Community Design Registration for the well-known Trunki suitcase. If, as in the case of the CRD, an applicant for a Community Registered Design elects to submit CADs of an item, whose main body appears as a uniform grey, but which has a black strip, a black strap and black wheels, the natural inference is that the components shown in black are intended to be in a contrasting colour to that of the main body.On the other hand, the Court of Appeal sanctioned the High Court ruling in Samsung v Apple [2012] EWHC 1882 (Pat) that an important feature of Apple’s design (also being filed in black and white line drawings [shown at Fig 3]) was a lack of surface decoration, which became an important differentiator between it and the alleged infringement.

This 3-in-1 kiddee case is made from durable plastic, it features a fun tiger design and allows your child to ride, pack and pull the case. The court must take into consideration the way that the particular design is intended to be used and interacted with, which may lead to certain design features having greater influence on the overall impression than others. It is quite unlikely that Magmatic intended to highlight that aspect of their design when they prepared and filed the registration, however this (partially) allowed the Supreme Court to conclude that the Kiddee case (an image of which is shown above) did produce a different overall impression and therefore did not infringe. There are a number of options available to the designer to draw out certain important elements or disclaim unimportant ones, and line drawings, CADs and photographs will rightly continue to be used depending on what is intended to be protected. The High Court Judge found that the RCD was “evidently for the shape of the suitcase” and therefore ignored the decorations on the Kiddee Case.saying that the overall impression between the Claimant's registered design and the Defendant's product is not the same so there is no infringement. It held that the Kiddee Case did not create a different overall impression from – and therefore it infringed – Magmatic’s CRD.