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A good day to bury a bad king.

Lord Neuberger reads today’s judgment in Court 1, where there is a wooden carving of Richard III, Shakespeare’s ‘bottled spider’. His alleged remains are being buried today in Leicester, arguably the last place on earth where he’d want to end up. The Times Literary Supplement tweets excitedly that he is being ‘reinterned’, an interesting concept.

Meanwhile, as a result of this judgment in R (on the application of Evans) and another v Attorney General, we will learn just how interesting or otherwise are the confidential ‘black spider’ memos penned by the Prince of Wales to government ministers. I blogged about the hearing here.

After the judgment I sit in on Starbucks (HK) Limited and another v British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC and others. It’s about the use of a trademark; Christopher Wadlow is repeatedly cited as an authority.

At the launch of his book The Law of Passing-off some 25 years ago, I was given a glittery brooch from Simmons & Simmons’ black museum of passing off – I never established whether it was real or fake.

He will forgive me for saying that on launch day he was keyed up about giving an interview on Radio 4 and, after a moment’s carelessness, the ink in his fountain pen stained his shirt so he had to pop out to buy a new one. Watching paint dry (a comparison sometimes unfairly made with the Supreme Court) is not as much fun as watching ink spread, or watercolour. My new toy in court today, the Kuretake Little Red Gift Set, keeps paints and water carefully contained – no need for a new shirt.

As today’s appellant is Starbucks, readers may visualise the coffee shop logo, even though it’s a different company. The legal profession itself has no satisfactory logo. A gavel? Not if you’re referring to England, where it has no place. I am worryingly pleased to be a spotter for http://inappropriategavels.tumblr.com.

 
More pictures if you scroll down. There is currently an exhibition of my Supreme Court drawings at Pinsent Masons’ Broadgate office.

This post originally featured on Isobel’s blog Drawing from an uncomfortable position on 26 March 2015.