High court or county court?

Wesley Jessen Corporation and another v Coopervision Ltd (Ch D TLR 31 July)

The Civil Procedure Rules are neutral as to the distribution of work between the Patents Court and the Patents County Court. Accordingly, a claimant is free to issue patent proceedings in the High Court or the Patents County Court. The Patents County court is a specialist county court in which the parties could be confident that any hearing would be before a specialist judge who was a respected and experienced patents lawyer. On an application to transfer from one court to the other the criteria were the interests of efficiency and expediency. If it transpired that the proceedings were equally suitable for the county court or the Patents Court, or if the arguments in favour of each were finely balanced, then there should be no order for a transfer. Relevant factors were: