Carl Harrison v Andrea Elaine Buchanan & Anor

This action began as a claim for infringement of copyright and breach of contact. By the end of the trial the dispute came down to a short point: the sum, if any, due to the claimant (‘Mr Harrison’) for the work done by him in creating drawings of components of an electrochemical water conditioner (‘the Conditioner’) which he supplied to the defendants (‘the Buchanans’).

Mr Harrison was represented by John-Paul Tettmar-Saleh, acting pro-bono, for which he is to be commended. The defendants appeared in a video link from France as litigants in person. The first defendant (‘Ms Buchanan’) is the daughter of the second defendant (‘Mr Buchanan’).

Mr Harrison’s account of events and his claim as set out in the Amended Particulars of Claim is as follows. He says that he created drawings (‘the Drawings’) of the Conditioner at the request of Mr Buchanan with a promise of payment for his work and expertise. This happened by way of an oral agreement on 22 May 2022 (‘the Agreement’), with the terms of payment possibly discussed afterwards.

The Agreement contained at least the following express terms:

Mr Harrison says that the Agreement also contained the express term that the defendants would pay him £350 per hour of his time spent and the following implied terms:

Mr Harrison says that he fully performed his obligations under the Agreement. He created the Drawings between 13 August 2022 and 18 April 2023. Copies of some of them are exhibited to the Particulars. The originals have been retained by the Buchanans and Mr Harrison does not have copies of the majority.

Mr Harrison’s pleaded case is that he owns the copyright in each of the Drawings. Because the defendants failed to pay for the work done, they have no licence under the copyrights. The defendants have infringed the copyrights in two ways. First, by copying them in attachments to an email sent to a Taiwan-based company, Shyang Sun Hardware Co Ltd (‘Shyang Sun’). Shyang Sun was instructed by the Buchanans or one of them to reproduce the drawings using CAD software. Secondly, the Buchanans filed a patent application, No. GB2305868.8 (‘the Patent Application’) and for that purpose they made a copy of Mr Harrison’s drawing of the internal cap for the Conditioner (‘the Internal Cap Drawing’). The Patent Application never reached grant and was terminated as of 23 April 2024.

Mr Harrison pleads that by failing to pay him as agreed, the defendants are in breach of contract. He calculates his loss at £35,000 for 100 days of labour at £350 per day plus £180 cost of materials, making a total of £35,180, which Mr Harrison claims in damages. He also claims additional damages.

Aside from damages the Particulars of Claim seek an injunction restraining any further infringement of his copyrights, delivery up of the Drawings, an order for the publication and dissemination of this judgment, interest and costs.

The original Particulars of Claim were attached to the Claim Form and were apparently drafted without legal assistance. The Buchanans filed a Defence of sorts. It takes the form of an email dated 5 December 2023 to Abdul Musa of Chancery Issuing. It is short and discursive. It vehemently denies Mr Harrison’s allegations and states that the relief sought is vindictive. No point on the jurisdiction of the court was taken.

There was a case management conference before Miss Recorder Amanda Michaels on 4 March 2025. Ms Michaels gave Mr Harrison permission to amend the Claim Form and Particulars of Claim, permission to the Buchanans to file an Amended Defence and she adjourned the CMC.

The Claim Form and Particulars of Claim were amended and filed on 19 March 2025. The Amended Particulars of Claim are signed by counsel and set out Mr Harrison’s case as discussed above. No amended Defence was served.

At the adjourned CMC the issues arising under the claims for breach of contract and infringement of copyright were divided into 18 sub-issues following discussion between the court and the parties.

At the trial the issues to be resolved declined, initially to two. The Buchanans did not deny that Mr Harrison created the drawings. They said that the Drawings were copied from earlier CAD drawings of the components of the Conditioner, but the limited comparisons possible on the documents available did not support this. It is more likely that the CAD drawings created by Shyang Sun were based on Mr Harrison’s drawings. It is not something that needs to be resolved. Counsel for Mr Harrison did not pursue the claim for copyright infringement on the understandable ground that there was insufficient evidence available for the court to reach a conclusion. Mr Harrison has copies of only a few of the Drawings. None of the originals were in court. I would in any event have taken some persuading that Mr Harrison is entitled to claim payment of the sum due for his grant of a licence under the copyrights in the Drawings (assuming there was an agreement for such payment) as well as damages flowing from the lack of a licence.

This left two issues: was there an agreement between Mr Harrison and Mr Buchanan that Mr Harrison would create the Drawings for payment and if so, what sum is due to Mr Harrison by way of payment?

Initially during the trial the Buchanans insisted that there had been no binding agreement relating to the Drawings. They did not deny that there had been a discussion between Mr Harrison and Mr Buchanan – they said that it had taken place either at a social gathering in France on 22 May 2022 and/or shortly thereafter – and that Mr Harrison had said that he would make engineering drawings of the Conditioner which Mr Buchanan wanted to develop. Their contention was that Mr Harrison offered to make the drawings without payment to alleviate his boredom and to help stop his excessive drinking. (I should add that Mr Harrison stated that he has never had a problem with alcohol.)

Later in 2022 there were discussions about a proposed business arrangement between Mr Harrison and the Buchanans. On 22 September 2022 Mr Buchanan sent an email to Mr Harrison containing a business plan involving a start-up company in which Mr Harrison was invited to take a financial interest. The next day Mr Harrison replied:

The same day, 23 September 2022, Mr Buchanan responded:

When this last email, in particular the second paragraph quoted above, was raised in cross-examination with the Buchanans they conceded that there had been an agreement under which Mr Harrison was to create and supply the Drawings for payment.

I note also, though only in passing, that the same paragraph is inconsistent with the Drawings having bene slavishly copied from CAD drawings which Mr Buchanan gave to Mr Harrison.

I find that there was an agreement, the principal terms of which were that Mr Harrison would create technical drawings of the Conditioner and that Mr Buchanan would pay for them. The Agreement was concluded orally, on or not long after 22 May 2022.

At this stage in the trial the Buchanans’ emphasis turned to their contention that the Drawings were not fit for purpose. The matter had been raised in their informal Defence:

This may have been intended to be what lawyers would characterise as an argument that the agreement contained an implied term that the Drawings would be fit for purpose. The skeleton argument filed on behalf of Mr Harrison indicated that Mr Harrison did not interpret the Defence that way and did not come to court to meet that case.

It seems to me that even if Mr Harrison had thought that there was a dispute about an implied term as to fitness for purpose, he was in no position to deal with it. One piece of evidence relating to it was filed by the Buchanans. It was a letter dated 25 August 2023 to Ms Buchanan from Franck Dumaine, Associate General Director of Serodem, a French company specialising in the making and machining of mechanical equipment. Mr Dumaine stated that Serodem would not proceed with implementation of Ms Buchanan’s water treatment project because the specifications provided and associated plans were not sufficiently robust. Mr Dumaine added that the dimensioning and presentation provided would need to be revised before Serodem could work with Ms Buchanan’s company.

I assume that Serodem is the aerospace precision engineering workshop referred to in the Defence. The findings of the Consiliateur de Justice did not make it into the documents filed. I was not told about the nature of any proceedings there may have been before the French courts or how they relate to the proceedings in this court.

The difficulty with an allegation that there was an implied term of fitness for purpose in the Agreement is that there was no evidential basis for establishing either (i) the criteria which the Drawings would have had to meet in order to be fit for purpose in all the circumstances, or (ii) that such a term including those criteria was to be implied according to the usual principles of law governing implied terms, or (iii) why the Drawings failed to satisfy those criteria, if they did. The letter of 25 August 2023 from Serodem indicates that Serodem was not prepared to work on the Buchanan’s project but I cannot conclude that this was solely to do with the inadequacy of Mr Harrison’s Drawings, if they were inadequate, or that Serodem’s assessment was based on criteria which coincide with those to be implied into the Agreement, if they were, or even that Serodem’s assessment was rational and reasonable in the circumstances.

Therefore, to the extent that the Buchanans intended to advance the argument that Mr Harrison was in breach of an implied term of fitness for purpose, there was no evidential support for it.

On 19 July 2023 Mr Harrison sent an invoice for payment for the Drawings to Mr Buchanan. He claimed £35,180, representing 100 days of work at £350 per day plus £180 for materials. The invoice was sent more than a year after the Agreement was concluded. Mr Harrison said that £350 per day was part of the Agreement as made but I doubt it. There was no evidence by way of support. The very round figure of 100 days spent on the Drawings was not substantiated by any evidence either.

In the summer of 2023 Mr Harrison and the Buchanans discussed a new proposal under which Mr Harrison would invest £75,000 in a company set up by the Buchanans to exploit the Conditioner. The proposal involved the company taking ownershjp of a patent relating to the Conditioner and paying Mr Harrison money out of profits made by the company. The idea came to nothing. However, I asked the Buchanans about an email from Ms Buchanan to Anaïs Lecarpentier dated 13 July 2023. Ms Lecarpentier was a French lawyer advising the Buchanans about their business affairs. The email included this:

I asked the Buchanans where the valuation of €15,000 for Mr Harrison’s drawings had come from. It apparently came from Mr Harrison in a Facebook exchange with them on 18 June 2023. In that exchange Mr Harrison referred to his then intended investment of €75,000 in cash and also identified the sum of €15,000 for his work on the drawings as part of what would have been his contribution to the company:

I am not sure what Mr Harrison did by way of ‘machining and PTFE’ (PTFE usually means Teflon). As appears from Ms Buchanan’s email of 13 July 2025, the €15,000 was in essence for Mr Buchanan’s work on the Drawings.

At least in June and July 2023 the parties were apparently agreed on €15,000 as the fair sum due to Mr Buchanan for making and supplying the Drawings. That is the most reliable guide I have.

I take on board the letter of 25 August 2023 from Serodem but as I have said, I can imply no term into the Agreement that the Drawings had to be fit for purpose or, if the term could be implied, what it meant in practice. I note also that the common ground in the summer of 2023 that Mr Harrison was entitled to €15,000 for the Drawings does not appear to support the suggestion that the Drawings were unfit for purpose. The Buchanans were, it seems, sufficiently satisfied with the Drawings in July 2023 to take the view that a payment of €15,000 was appropriate.

Mr Harrison succeeds in his claim for breach of contract. The current exchange rate is €1.14 for one pound sterling, making €15,000 equivalent to about £13,160. I will add £720 in interest, which very roughly equates to a rate of 2% per annum since the date of the invoice, making a total of £13,880.

Mr Harrison is entitled to damages in the sum of £13,880 including interest. I make no order as to costs.