Post Office Act 1969

9 (1) Any dispute as to the exercise by the Post Office or a person authorised by it of powers subsisting by virtue of the foregoing provisions of this Schedule, or as to terms for use thereunder of an invention or any models, documents or information relating to an invention, or as to the right of any person to receive any part of a payment made in pursuance of paragraph 5 of this Schedule or any such agreement as is referred to in paragraph 3 thereof may be referred to the court by either party to the dispute in such manner as is prescribed by the rules for the time being in force for the purposes of section 48(1) of the Patents Act 1949.

(2) Subsections (2) to (5) of section 48 of the Patents Act 1949 shall have effect in relation to proceedings under the foregoing sub-paragraph and disputes that may be determined thereunder as they do in relation to proceedings and disputes that may be determined under subsection (1) of the said section 48, but subject to the modifications that—

(a) in subsection (2), for references to a government department there shall be substituted references to the Post Office;

(b) in subsection (3), for the references to section 46 of that Act and to the opinion of the government department there shall be substituted respectively references to paragraph 5(a) of this Schedule and to the opinion of the Minister stated in a certificate signed by him; and

(c) in subsection (4), for the first reference to a government department there shall be substituted a reference to the Post Office, for the second such reference there shall be substituted a reference to the department of the Postmaster General or the Post Office, and the reference to the services of the Crown shall include a reference to the purposes of the Post Office.

(3) Any proceedings under the said section 48 which are in progress immediately before the appointed day, being proceedings to which the department of the Postmaster General is a party, may be continued with the substitution of the Post Office for that department; but in relation to such proceedings, subsection (3) of the said section 48 shall have effect with the substitution, for the reference to the opinion of a government department, of a reference to the opinion of the Minister stated in a certificate signed by him.