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Watson Webb v Comino: When Valves Burst Into a Multi-IP Flood

If you thought plumbing valves were boring, think again.

The Federal Court’s recent decision in Watson Webb Pty Ltd v Comino [2025] FCA 871 is a sprawling reminder that IP disputes can leak into every corner of the law — from designs and copyright to confidence, consumer law and patents.

The Case in a Nutshell

At the heart of the fight was who really owned the rights to a series of valve designs — All Valve Industries (AVI) and its Italian partner Cimberio, or Mr Comino and his company Strongcast. What started as a commercial relationship around importing and distributing valves became a flood of litigation once design drawings, product launches and patent filings entered the picture.

Designs: Entitlement, Validity and Infringement

  • Entitlement: The Court found that Cimberio was at least a co-designer of the registered designs. Mr Comino couldn’t claim sole credit.

  • Validity: The designs were new and distinctive enough over prior art.

  • Infringement: AVI’s products weren’t substantially similar, so no design infringement was made out.

  • Unjustified threats: A strongly worded solicitor’s letter wasn’t enough to count as a threat.

Copyright: Drawings Matter

The critical twist: design registration was based on drawings created by Cimberio. Using them without permission crossed into copyright infringement.

The Court found:

  • Cimberio’s copyright subsisted in the drawings.

  • Comino and Strongcast copied and authorised copying when they used those drawings to file design applications.

  • Cimberio is entitled to an account of profits plus additional damages.

Breach of Confidence and Constructive Trust

The same drawings carried obligations of confidence. Comino’s disclosure and use of them breached that duty.

The Court imposed a constructive trust — transferring Comino’s interest in the registered designs to Cimberio.

That’s a dramatic remedy, showing courts will reorder ownership when confidential information is misused.

Consumer Law: Silence Speaks

By not telling AVI and Cimberio that the drawings were being used to file design rights, Comino engaged in misleading conduct under s 18 ACL.

Silence can mislead — especially in a close commercial relationship.

Patents: Invalid and Ineffective

Strongcast also relied on an innovation patent for a pipe bracket.

The Court held claims 1–4 invalid for lack of clarity, support, sufficiency and novelty.

Even if valid, no infringement was established.

Why It Matters

This case is a reminder that:

  • Design entitlement must be nailed down early — who really created the design?

  • Copyright overlaps with designs are still powerful, especially when drawings are copied into applications.

  • Constructive trusts are on the table where confidential information is misused.

  • Consumer law can bite in IP disputes in many and varied ways — misleading silence can be enough.

  • Innovation patents (now extinct) often struggled on validity grounds.

What looks like a simple plumbing part turned into a judgment that touches almost every corner of IP law.

For brand owners, designers and manufacturers, the message is clear: guard your drawings, document your entitlement, and don’t assume silence will save you.

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Aristocrat’s Jackpot: Full Court Revives Gaming Machine Patents

When does a slot machine cross the line from an abstract idea to a patentable invention?

After years of litigation, remittals, and even a 3–3 deadlock in the High Court, the Full Federal Court has finally tipped the balance in Aristocrat’s favour.

🎰 The Long Spin

Aristocrat has been fighting since 2018 to keep its patents over electronic gaming machines (EGMs) with “configurable symbols” — feature games that change play dynamics and prize allocation. The Commissioner argued these were just abstract rules of a game dressed up in software. Aristocrat said they were genuine machines of a particular construction that yielded a new and useful result.

The case bounced through:

  • Delegate (2018): patents revoked.

  • Burley J (2020): Aristocrat wins.

  • Full Court (2021): Aristocrat loses (majority invents “advance in computer technology” test).

  • High Court (2022): split 3–3, affirming the Full Court’s result by default under Judiciary Act s 23(2)(a).

  • Remittal (2024): Burley J reluctantly applies Full Court reasoning against Aristocrat.

Cue the latest appeal.

⚖️ The Precedent Puzzle

The Full Court (Beach, Rofe & Jackman JJ) confronted a thorny problem: should it stick to its own 2021 reasoning when the High Court had unanimously rejected that reasoning, even though no majority emerged?

The answer: No.

  • Only majority or unanimous High Court views are binding.

  • But the High Court’s unanimous criticism provided a “compelling reason” to abandon the earlier Full Court approach.

  • The Court found “constructive error” — not blaming Burley J, but recognising the law had to move on.

🖥️ Rethinking “Manner of Manufacture”

The Court reframed the test for computer-implemented inventions:

  • Not patentable: an abstract idea manipulated on a computer.

  • Patentable: an abstract idea implemented on a computer in a way that creates an artificial state of affairs and useful result.

Applying this, Aristocrat’s claim 1 was patentable — and by extension, so were the dependent claims across its four patents. The EGMs weren’t just abstract gaming rules. They were machines, purpose-built to operate in a particular way.

💡 Why It Matters

  • For patentees: This revives hope for computer-implemented inventions beyond “pure software” where technical implementation creates a new device or process.

  • For examiners: IP Australia may need to recalibrate examination practice on software-related patents — the “advance in computer technology” yardstick is gone.

  • For practitioners: This is a case study in how precedent, process, and patents collide. The High Court’s split didn’t end the story — it forced the Full Court to resolve it.

🚀 Takeaway

The Full Court has effectively reset the slot reels. Aristocrat’s EGMs are back in play, and the scope of patentable computer-implemented inventions in Australia looks a little brighter.

Sometimes the house doesn’t win.

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IP Australia Knocks Canva to the Canvas

How many patents could a patent combatant patent if a patent combatant could patent patents?  It turns out possibly none, if they’re IT-based patents …

It’s not often that a legal decision about slide deck formatting gets a 230-page appendix and a judicial tone verging on exasperation. But that’s exactly what happened in April when IP Australia handed down the Delegate’s ruling on two Canva patent applications. And for tech lawyers, it’s a masterclass in where the edges of software patentability still lie in Australia.

What Canva Sought to Patent

Canva — Australia’s SaaS design darling — had sought patent protection for two computer-implemented inventions. One described how to take content from a document and reflow it into a deck format automatically. The other focused on the math behind mapping design “fills” into limited layout “frames.”

The applications were meticulous. Detailed. Full of flowcharts, hierarchy data, bounding boxes, fills, and pagination logic. They read like a design engineer’s epic poem – a love letter to structured templates.

But in the eyes of IP Australia, they weren’t inventions. Not in the legal sense, anyway.

The Legal Lesson: “Manner of Manufacture” Still Matters

Australia’s test for whether a computer-implemented invention is patentable remains the “manner of manufacture” test — essentially asking whether the claimed invention involves more than just abstract ideas, business rules, or well-known computer functions.

And here, the Delegate of the Commissioner of Patents said: nope.

Despite Canva’s argument that their invention transformed how users generate designs and templates, IP Australia saw it differently: the claims described a process for applying “rules” to content in order to lay it out aesthetically — something a human designer could do, and something that didn’t, in substance, solve a technical problem or enhance the functioning of a computer. It was more scheme than science.

More Than Just a Canva Problem

Why should the rest of us care?

Because this is yet another signal — after decisions like Research Affiliates and Rokt — that Australia continues to draw a relatively narrow line on software patents. If you’re advising a client on patent strategy in the digital design, AI, or UX tooling space, the key takeaway is this: just because something’s hard to code doesn’t mean it’s patentable.

The software has to do more than automate — it must yield a technical effect or improvement that isn’t just the automation itself.

So, What’s Next?

For Canva, it’s back to the drawing board — or perhaps, back to their formidable brand and copyright moat. And they still have six months to reframe the claims in a way that may survive scrutiny.

For the rest of us, it’s another sharp reminder that patenting in the tech sector remains as much an art as a science. Don’t just ask “Is it clever?” Ask, “Is it a manner of manufacture?”

Because in Australian patent law, not all clicks are created equal.