The Empire Strikes Back? Lessons from the Supreme Court's judgment in Lucasfilm Limited and others (Appellants) v. Ainsworth and another (Respondents) [2011] UKSC 39, July 2011

• Author: Tim Vollans
• Position: Coventry Law School, Coventry University, UK
• Pages: 276-281

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276

The Empire Strikes Back? Lessons from the Supreme Court’s judgment in

Lucasfilm Limited and others (Appellants) v. Ainsworth and another

(Respondents) [2011] UKSC 39, July 2011”

Tim Vollans

*

Coventry Law School,

Coventry University, UK

lsx013@coventry.ac.uk

Abstract. The recent UK Supreme Court case Lucasfilm v. Ainsworth has highlighted the

complexities of enforcing Intellectual Property Rights in th e UK. This note explores the

substantive points argued in those proceedings befo re briefly commenting on the procedural issues

encountered. Finally, it suggests that a specialist dispute resolution forum e xternal to the court

structure could expedite dispute resolution and improve access to justice.

© 2012 Tim Vollans . Published by JICLT. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Jurists readily recognise that rights granted without effective means of enforcement are not rights at all; and this

truism holds good as much for property rights as for civil rights. As a consequence, the true value o f rights, and

particularly those p ertaining to property ‘ownership’, lies not just in the formulated rights themselves but in the

facility with which the legal system offers an accessible and appropriate system for their assertion, access to

justice, and enforcement. Thi s is no less the case for Intellectual Property (IP) rights which are commonly

overlaid with the ad ded complication of an international j urisdictional dimension so that any consideration of IP

rights necessarily synthesise s the ‘local’ with the ‘global’ and the ‘substantive’ with the ‘procedural’ as

illustrated by the recent UK Supreme Court judgment in Lucasfilm Limited and others (Appellants) v. Ainsworth

[2011] UKSC 39 (hereafter ‘Lucasfilm’). In that case, i n order to apply copyright protection, the Supreme Court

judges had to clarify not only a ‘simple’ statutory definition, but also the extent of foreign j urisdictional ‘reach’ -

thereby conjoining substantive law and legal rights with domestic lega l systemic issues.

The purpose of this short paper is to focus upon those issues; to recognise the systemic challenges and

hurdles encountered in upholding and enforcing substantive legal rights; to distinguish those systemic challe nges

and hurdles from t hose specifically encountered in upholding substantive intellectual property ri ghts; and finally

to draw out of the Supreme Court judgments some basic systemic adjustments capable of reinforcing access to

justice in the context of intellectual property rights. This paper will start by summarising the facts and lega l

issues raised in the case, before proceeding to comment briefly on the judgments. Such brief commentar y offers

neither a procedural paradigm nor a prescription of best policy or practice; but it does offer itself as a modest

contribution to initiate, and as an initial contribution to, a wider discussion bet ween interested parties

(individuals, organisations, and governments) and to infor m the subsequent formulation of legislation, policy and

process. It does not claim to address all issues or to offer universal solution s: but it does highlight the imperative

that whilst IP enjoys many unique facets, it is not so different from its juristic co usins. It does assert that an

effective and maintained systemic legal access to justice predicates respect for the substantive legal rights, not

least those pertaining to IP.