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At the conclusion of any hearing, under CPR 44 (Practice Direction 13), the Court is able to summarily assess the successful party’s costs. This is a common occurrence after trials, although some trial judges order a detailed assessment. Detailed assessment should also be ordered in trials which last more than one day. In those cases, they may well order a payment on account of costs. However, where summary assessment takes place, the Court is to take into account the costs incurred as claimed within a schedule of costs in the form N260. It is important to bear in mind that any summary assessment should only be carried out by the judge who heard the substantive matter.
1-800 Flowers -v- Phonenames
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1-800 FLOWERS -v- PHONENAMES
This was a claim regarding a US company’s dispute with a company based in the United Kingdom over the use and registration of a trademark. It was found that the American company could not register a variant of its free US alpha-numeric telephone number as a service mark under the Trade Marks Act 1938 since the number was not distinctive of its business and the company did not own the equivalent free UK telephone number. As a result, the claim failed, and on appeal, the first instance decision was upheld. However, on appeal it was found that the original summary assessment of costs was flawed, in that the judge had not gone into any sort of detailed analysis of the defendant’s estimated statement of costs. Instead, he appeared to have applied his own tariff as to what costs were appropriate for a "one day, paper only" appeal. That approach was wrong in principle, and a suitable examination of the costs schedules provided should be undertaken when carrying out a summary assessment.
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