Nicholas Pumfrey

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Sir Nicholas Richard Pumfrey

Court of Appeal
little more than a month before his sudden death.

Early life and education

The son of Peter and Maureen Pumfrey, Nicholas Pumfrey was brought up in Bristol, where his father was a solicitor.[3] He was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford.[4] In 1969, he matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford,[5] where he received his Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Physics in 1972.[6] He also completed a degree in Law in 1974.[4]

Career

Pumfrey was called to the Bar by the

Chancery Division, in 1997 and was knighted.[4][7]

His first instance decision in the case brought by

Prince Jefri of Brunei against his accountants KPMG was upheld by the House of Lords after being overturned by the Court of Appeal.[8]

He was a regular speaker at the annual intellectual property conference at

Max Planck Institute in Munich. He was the first British judge to join the enlarged board of appeal of the European Patent Office in Munich. At least from 1 January 2003 to 21 December 2004, he was a legally qualified external (non-permanent) member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal[9] of the European Patent Office (EPO).[10]

He was promoted to the

Lord Justice of Appeal upon the retirement of Lord Justice Chadwick on 4 November 2007.[7]

Personal life

Pumfrey kept a house in the

truffles.[6][11][12] He enjoyed cycling in earlier years, and later took to BMW motorcycles. He was a member of the Garrick Club. A confirmed bachelor, he never married.[8]

In the summer of 2007, he was diagnosed as suffering from an

stroke.[3] His funeral took place on 14 January 2008 in Temple Church, London.[13]

Judgments

Justice Pumfrey ruled in the important[citation needed] copyright case of Navitaire v Easyjet (2004), where he found that the 'look and feel' of a computer program could not be protected by copyright law without access to the program's source code. The judgment is seen to be in line with the Directive on Computer Programs.

He decided the case of Cantor Fitzgerald v Tradition UK (2001), where he ruled that the 3,000 out of 77,000 lines of copied source code by Tradition's programmers would be substantial, it not being important to substantiality what use the program made out of the code, i.e. whether it could function without it or not, but it would be a substantial if the part taken was original.

He ruled in Sandman v Panasonic that a single create effort could result in both a literary and artistic copyright, giving the example of a calligraphic poem of a cat.

Bibliography

  • The Protection of Designs, contribution in International Intellectual Property and the Common Law World, edited by Charles E.F. Rickett and Graeme W. Austin, Oxford : Hart, 2000,
    ISBN 1-84113-179-2

References

  1. ^ a b Judiciary of England and Wales government web site, Senior Judiciary List Archived 28 July 2012 at WebCite. Consulted on 13 May 2007.
  2. ^ Jeremy Phillips, Sir Nicholas Pumfrey 1951-2007, IPKat, 30 December 2007. Consulted on 30 December 2007.
  3. ^ a b Online, Times. "Senior IP judge Lord Justice Pumfrey dies".
  4. ^ a b c 10 Downing Street web site, Privy Council Appointment of Sir Nicholas Pumfrey, 20 November 2007.
  5. ^ St Edmund Hall website, Famous Graduates. Consulted on 12 May 2007.
  6. ^ a b c "Sir Nicholas Pumfrey - Telegraph". www.telegraph.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2 January 2008. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  7. ^ a b 10 Downing Street web site, Nicholas Pumfrey appointed as Lord Justice of Appeal, 4 July 2007
  8. ^
    TheGuardian.com
    . 5 January 2008.
  9. ^ under Article 160(2) EPC 1973
  10. ^
  11. ^ "Sir Nicholas Pumfrey QC – Obituary". 10 August 2012.
  12. Independent.co.uk. 9 January 2008. Archived
    from the original on 18 June 2022.
  13. ^ "Youngest Lord Justice dies, aged 56".
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