DOCUMENTS

A single pdf file contains the completed Judicial Review Application Form, the Statement of Grounds & Facts, Appendix 1 (Further Particulars, including schedules), Appendix 2 (lists of Authorities, Acts & Rules, and Patent Office staff instructions – both the actual instructions and the altered substitute instructions), Appendix 3 (indices of Evidence Exhibits and 182 extracts - screenshots – of Exhibits, and Appendix 4 (essential reading list, at the end of the document).

See www.theinventivesteps.co.uk/printing.html

“The statement of the law in Emerald Construction Co Ltd v Lowthian ([1966] 1 WLR 691, 700-701) had been followed in many cases and was in accordance with the general principle that a conscious decision not to inquire into the existence of a fact was in many cases treated as equivalent to knowledge of that fact.

“People seldom knowingly caused loss by unlawful means out of simple disinterested malice. It was usually to achieve the further end of securing an economic advantage to themselves.”

Summary

The Claimant is the victim of fraud at the UK Patent Office. HM Revenue & Customs would be expected to take action under paragraph 13, section 114, schedule 17 Finance Act 1999, but HMRC has been discovered by the Claimant to have been involved in the establishment of the fraud and has tried to deceive the Attorney General so as to block such action from being brought against the Comptroller of Patents in the Attorney General’s name. Action may be brought for fraud under the Finance Act 1999 in the name of the Attorney General if HMRC is of the opinion that the Comptroller of Patent’s existing liability to penalty under the Stamp Act 1891 arose by reason of fraud (which, according to the now-exposed evidence, it clearly did).

The Comptroller of Patents has been instructing staff to hide documents which are chargeable with unpaid Stamp Duty. The Comptroller has a statutory duty not to record or register any transaction, event or document in respect of which there is an unpaid Stamp Duty liability. This duty gets in the way of procuring registration renewal fees of up to £6,000 over the life of a patent. The Claimant has discovered the unlawful methods by which the Comptroller has procured the renewal fees without Stamp Duty having been paid – these involve hiding documents, altering the wording on the Register of Patents and altering the wording in confirmation letters.

When challenged by the Claimant in 2007 over his training, procedures and practice, the Comptroller made a number of claims which have since been proved to be false. The Comptroller tried to cover up his fraud by creating a fictitious procedure as a decoy and apologising for failing to follow that procedure. The Comptroller claimed that section instructions confirmed what he claimed, but it has since been proved that section instructions have been altered - in spite of claims that they had not.

The Information Commissioner has been discovered to have concealed the Word Document containing the altered instructions and to have substituted the Word Document with a pdf copy of a different Word Document in order to avoid prosecuting the Comptroller and deceive the Claimant.

Both the Comptroller and the Information Commissioner have deceived the Police over the nature of and the relationship between the Word Document, the pdf, the instruction alteration date and the Claimant’s Freedom of Information requests for the alteration date.

The quotation above applies just as much to the Information Commissioner (for concealing and turning a blind eye to the central evidence that Claimant had asked him to locate and investigate) as it does to the Comptroller (whose altered instruction gave the impression that Patent Office staff inspected all documents, when in fact they were instructed to “ignore” certain documents in certain circumstances).

Therefore, in the eyes of the law, it is contended by the Claimant that both the Comptroller and the Information Commissioner knew that they were handling, concealing, and making false declarations in respect of, false documents.

The Instructions

A Patent Office in-house (secret) staff instruction manual, which was altered by the Comptroller’s Register Manager, copied to pdf, and substituted for the actual staff instructions, in breach of s.77 Freedom of Information Act 2000, is evidence of a fraudulent cover-up. The altered staff instructions containing the date of alteration (i.e. the actual Word Document Pat Ass DN Ver3.doc) have been concealed by the Information Commissioner in his attempt to close his investigation into the Comptroller’s fraudulent substitution of altered staff instructions and avoid bringing a prosecution on false grounds of a lack of evidence. The Information Commissioner’s concealment has been exposed by the Claimant’s discovery of a single character (a letter “A”) in the 51-page hitherto secret instruction manual. Whilst the Comptroller altered the letter “A” to a quotation mark in four sets of section instructions on one computer, he forgot to alter it on the replicas on the computer inspected by the Information Commissioner. The net result was that the Information Commissioner ended up with a Word Document from one Patent Office computer and a slightly different pdf from another - without realising that the pdf could not be a copy of the Word Document he was concealing on account of the electronic date-stamped information it contained. The Information Commissioner printed from the concealed Word Document on 22-06-09 thinking it to be no different from printing from the pdf. He sent the printed document to the Claimant on 22-06-09, claiming that it was created on 16-08-07 (16 days after the previously-claimed creation date). The Information Commissioner claimed that the pdf was an electronic copy of the printed document, but it was not. The Information Commissioner made this claim to the Police in the knowledge that the pdf was not an electronic copy of the Word Document (the Claimant having pointed out the difference between the two).

The Word Document is known to the Comptroller and to the Information Commissioner to hold the answer to the question as to when the instructions were altered. To conceal and exclude such evidence of fraudulent substitution is itself an offence under both the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Fraud Act 2006.

There is therefore a separate, parallel criminal matter of concealment by the Information Commissioner, which the Gwent Police obstinately shut their minds to, but which the Cheshire Police and the Lancashire Constabulary have not.

Brief details of each Defendant’s involvement in the fraud and the cover-up

(1) The Comptroller (CEO) of the Patent Office (“IPO”), his Deputy (acting Comptroller), Deputy Finance Director, Senior Legal Officers and Registers Manger have been trying to cover up their deliberate hiding of unstamped documents (documents chargeable with unpaid Stamp Duty) and otherwise-defective documents sent to the IPO as purported proof of change of ownership of patents since January 1992. They have also been knowingly registering false assignment documentation since at least 24-05-99 in deliberate avoidance of questioning unstamped documents. The claimant has discovered instructions proving these allegations.

Registration renewal fees are the Comptroller’s profitable source of income (patent application fees do not cover the costs associated with granting a patent), and he has been reluctant to turn away paying customers on grounds of non-payment of Stamp Duty (but he must do so, by law). About 7,500 patents per annum are subject to registration of change of proprietorship, and the Comptroller must consider the Stamp Act 1891 and his duties thereunder. Up to around £6,000 in renewal fees is received by the Comptroller per patent over the full term of registration, and the Deputy (acting) Comptroller currently seeks to increase this sum substantially, though his public announcement claims only a modest increase.

Under s.14 and s.17 Stamp Act 1891, registrations of transactions may not be made without registrars ensuring that all and any necessary Stamp Duty has been paid. This statutory requirement has presented a barrier to legitimate registration for hundreds of years (like a toll-gate), and the Comptroller has sought to get around it by unlawful means (Appendix 1).

The Claimant is a victim of such fraud and has at last exposed the evidence, in spite of attempts to deceive him with false claims and an altered, substituted set of IPO staff instructions.

On 20-09-04, the Comptroller hid an unstamped document which was not in fact an assignment of the patent invented by the Claimant. The Comptroller covered up his fraud by altering the wording on the Register of Patents to make it look like only an application form had been filed (as opposed to a form and supporting documentary evidence), and by altering the standard confirmation letter so as not to draw attention to his knowledge that the application form was not signed sufficiently for registration purposes and needed to be accompanied by documentary evidence of assignment of the patent.

(2) HM Revenue & Customs (“HMRC”), who are responsible for the care and management of Stamp Duty have been trying to cover up their knowledge of the unlawful practice and their role in the Comptroller’s establishment of a particular practice on 28-03-00 of which HMRC was aware and to which HMRC has turned a blind eye (to the prejudice of inventors, such as he Claimant, licensees, and HM Treasury).

Unlawful registrations have been made where Stamp Duty on other associated property, which ought to have been paid, has not been paid. This has been achieved by hiding defective documents, altering the wording on the Register of Patents to make it appear that no documents were filed by the applicant, and altering the standard confirmation letter in cases where even the registration application form was defective (not legitimately signed) also.

The Claimant is a victim of such fraud and it has take five years to establish what happened on 20-09-04 (the first bogus registration of change of ownership of a patent he created), how it happened, why it happened, and why the Comptroller and various public bodies and authorities have obstructed and scuppered investigations and proceedings.

(3) The Attorney General has obstructed the Claimant by withholding HMRC’s decision with respect to the Comptroller’s liability to penalty under the Stamp Act 1891. The Decision was issued to her by HMRC many months ago with respect to action under paragraph 13, s.114 schedule 17 Finance Act 1999 (fraud giving rise to liability to penalty under the Stamp Act). The Attorney General has seen the documentary evidence of fraud, but HMRC has attempted to deceive her by issuing a false Decision so that she cannot lend her name to proceedings against the Comptroller (which would draw in HMRC as a complicit party). It is politically difficult for the Attorney General to act (refuse to lend her name) on such a Decision which she suspects or knows to be false, but cannot herself challenge – so she used a stalling tactic in the hope that the Claimant would drop the matter. He did not.

However, having evaded disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Attorney General, upon receiving on 10-11-09 21 days notice of the Claimant’s intention to apply for a Judicial Review of all relevant matters, decided to abandon HMRC to their fate and issued the long overdue and many-times promised letter – on the 21^st day - and posted it to the Claimant’s former address, knowing that he had moved and would not receive it before filing his application.

(4) The Information Commissioner has concealed evidence (the altered, substituted IPO staff instructions) in order to protect the Comptroller from prosecution under s.77 Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Fraud Act 2006. Altered, substituted IPO staff instructions have been discovered at the Information Commissioner’s Office which the Information Commissioner substituted for a pdf of a different Word Document in order to deceive the Claimant.

The Information then closed down his investigation, claiming that he was unable to gather sufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Comptroller had tried to keep the true IPO staff instructions from the Claimant. The applied-for Judicial Review is expected to deal with the Information Commissioner’s Final Decision of 04-09-09 to that end. It is quite clear that he could have procured the necessary evidence (in fact it is quite clear that he concealed evidence containing the date of alteration of the IPO staff instructions).

In parallel to this civil matter is the matter of the Information Commissioner’s concealment of the actual evidence of alteration and substitution, and his recent claim to the Cheshire Police that they should not investigate a matter which he himself was investigating. However, the Information Commissioner’s final Decision of 04-09-09 is absolutely clear – there was no such investigation preventing the Police from investigating allegations of his own concealment of evidence of fraud.

It becomes a matter of significant public interest when a high level public servant, such as the Information Commissioner, with investigative powers, conceals evidence (a Word Document) clearly identified to him in advance as containing electronic date-stamps proving serious alteration of its content after the date (01-08-07) upon which another public servant claims it existed.

There have been serious problems with a Police Inquiry by the Gwent Police (with whom the Claimant has had many problems in the past), but the Cheshire Police and the Lancashire Constabulary have responded appropriately, and the matter of the Information Commissioner’s concealment will be investigated.

Irrespective of whether there may be convictions for fraud and perverting the course of justice arising from the Information Commissioner’s concealment of the Word Document and substitution of a pdf created from a different Word Document of the same filename, the question as to whether the Information Commissioner’s Decisions of 22-06-09 and 04-09-09 that he was unable to gather sufficient evidence remains an appropriate matter for Judicial Review. There is more identified evidence at the IPO which the Information Commissioner could have and should have gathered, so a decision on Judicial Review shall not prejudice any criminal proceedings, nor vice versa.