Last month’s judgment by Mrs Justice Bacon in Banham Patent Locks v Danny Rogers illustrates the risk small and medium-sized companies face when defending intellectual property claims without proper representation. The defendant, acting as a litigant in person, agreed an undertaking with apparently no intention to comply, failed to meet procedural requirements, mismanaged communication, (to say the least) and misunderstood technical and legal issues at the heart of the dispute. These missteps led Bacon J to grant summary judgment against him on all claims, and the public judgment will have caused some reputational damage in its breadth and content. SMEs should treat this case as a clear reminder that navigating litigation without professional representation carries substantial risk. Securing qualified legal advice at an early stage provides essential protection and ensures that a defence is advanced in a competent manner complying with the rules.
Banham Patent Locks Limited (“Banham”) is a provider of locking systems and the owner of European patent EP2497882B1 and UK patent GB2488783B, protecting the ‘Mark III’ cylinder and key. Danny Rogers, trading as J Rogers & Sons, (“Mr Rogers”) owns and operates key-cutting businesses in London. In 2023, Banham discovered Mr Rogers was cutting Mark III keys, prompting their solicitors to write to him. Mr Rogers signed an undertaking promising to cease infringing, remove advertising relating to Banham, and destroy any infringing inventory. That was the first mistake that could have been avoided if Mr Rogers had been properly advised. If Mr Rogers had taken legal advice, he would have been warned that an undertaking has legal consequences and should not be agreed without full comprehension and intent to comply. Despite signing the undertaking, he continued to infringe. This was just the first in a series of missteps, as described in more detail below.
Banham instructed investigators who obtained keys from Mr Rogers’ businesses that displayed prominent features of the Mark III design. When sent photographs of the keys, Mr Rogers insisted that the keys were of the older, unpatented Mark II design and accused the investigators of fabricating evidence. This is the second example of a litigant in person misstep. Mr Rogers understood the technical distinction between the two key designs, but relied on assumptions instead of the evidence provided and failed to appreciate that the Mark III patent turns on the features of the finished key, not a blank. A Mark II key has dimples and only “a single pair of notches on the side of the keys […] located just below the head of the key.” [1] Mark II blanks are available with this single pair of notches already pre cut. By contrast, a Mark III key includes “two pairs of cut outs, or ‘notches’, with each pair of notches aligned on the opposite side edges of the key”. [2] Importantly, the claims “does not […] specify what that distance should be;” the second pair of notches can appear at different positions along the shaft. A Mark III key can be “cut from exactly the same key blank that is used to produce a Mark II key,” the difference being that the cutter must add “the required dimples [and] also the second pair of notches.” [3] Mr Rogers repeatedly argued that using a Mark II blank prevented infringement, but the court rejected this: “the claim is not that the use of any particular key blank was an infringement […] the patents are said to have been infringed by cutting the relevant key blank into Mark III keys”. [4] Mr Rogers’ reliance on this misconception constituted a significant oversight that an IP solicitor or patent attorney would have recognized and addressed.
Banham’s solicitors and Mr Rogers continued their correspondence from May 2025 to February 2026. Throughout, Mr Rogers’ emails grew increasingly aggressive. He accused Banham’s solicitors of harassment, incompetence and abused a trainee solicitor. Most startlingly, Mr Rogers sought out a public profile of the trainee, and directly sent him inappropriate and derogatory remarks. These communications did not address Banham’s substantive case and only harmed his position. This behaviour illustrates the difficulties that can arise when litigation is conducted without legal advice: appropriate professional guidance would have ensured that inter party communications remained focused, accurate and professional, avoiding conduct that ultimately damaged credibility. Anything less, when read by the opposing party or the court, damages credibility. In the weeks before trial, Mr Rogers refused to filed a substantive defence, despite being prompted to by Banham’s solicitors. The failure to file a formal defence highlights a procedural risk inherent in unrepresented litigation: a misunderstanding of pleading requirements and the limits of informal correspondence.
At the hearing before Bacon J in February 2026, Mr Rogers personally inspected the allegedly infringing keys brought by Banham, and abandoned his claim that they were of the unpatented Mark II design. This collapse of his main argument demonstrates the danger of building a defence on mistaken technical assumptions. An IP solicitor would have analysed the patent claims clearly and directed resources towards a credible defence. Or, and just as importantly, if no credible or financially proportionate defence could be prepared, advise their client of that and prepare them for next steps. Left without his original defence, Mr Rogers imagined a new argument: that none of his staff were trained on cutting the Mark III and therefore could not produce any infringing keys. He provided no witness statements, no training documents, no explanation on why this point had not been raised previously. Bacon J noted that Mr Rogers had ample opportunity to gather supporting evidence but he had failed to do so. This evidential void illustrates another common pitfall for unrepresented litigants. Without legal guidance, defendants often fail to collect or properly present evidence needed to support their position. An IP solicitor would have identified essential witnesses, drafted statements, and assembled a coherent evidential picture.
By the end of the hearing, the court had received no proper defence nor reliable evidence and heard no structured argument from Mr Rogers. Bacon J summarized the Easyair test for summary judgment, requiring the court to assess whether a defence is realistic rather than fanciful, and applied it to the facts. It was “undeniable” that the investigators’ keys had “two pairs of notches,” which defeated Mr Rogers’ claim that they were Mark II keys. [5] His fallback argument that his staff could not have cut Mark III keys failed because he had produced no evidence and had raised the point too late. Concluding that nothing in his correspondence or submissions disclosed any realistic prospect of defending the claim, Bacon J held it was “appropriate to draw a line under the proceedings” and granted summary judgment in Banham’s favour. [6]
For small and medium-sized companies, the case demonstrates how defending an intellectual property claim as a litigant in person can lead to compounding errors. Misunderstanding technical issues, missing procedural requirements, sending inappropriate correspondence, failing to gather evidence and misunderstanding the process as a whole all contributed to the outcome. At each stage, legal representation would have corrected course, prevented escalation and ensured compliance with rules. Timely legal advice may also have facilitated a negotiated settlement and avoided an adverse court judgment.
[1] Banham Patent Locks Limited v DannyRogers (trading as J Rogers &Sons) [2026] EWHC 528 (Pat), [17]
[2] ibid [16]
[3] ibid [16]; [64]; [17]
[4] ibid [64]
[5] ibid, [62]
[6] ibid, [75]