Sir Colin Ian Birss (born 28 January 1964 in

Thurso Thurso (pronounced ; sco, Thursa, gd, Inbhir Theòrsa ) is a town and former burgh on the north coast of the Highland council area of Scotland. Situated in the historical County of Caithness, it is the northernmost town on the island of Great ...

) is a judge of the

Court of Appeal of England and Wales The Court of Appeal (formally "His Majesty's Court of Appeal in England", commonly cited as "CA", "EWCA" or "CoA") is the highest court within the Courts of England and Wales#Senior Courts of England and Wales, Senior Courts of England and Wal ...

Career

Birss attended

Largs Academy Largs Academy is a Scottish secondary school, opened in August 1970, serving the towns of Largs, Fairlie, Skelmorlie and the island of Cumbrae, as well as taking placement requests from across Scotland, from places such as West Kilbride, Be ...

and then

Lancaster Royal Grammar School Lancaster Royal Grammar School (LRGS) is a selective grammar school (day and boarding) for boys aged 11–18 in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. Old students belong to The Old Lancastrians. The school's sixth form opened to girls in 2019. LRGS i ...

. He graduated from

Downing College, Cambridge Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 650 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to Cambridge University between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the olde ...

in 1986 with a first class honours degree in metallurgy and materials sciences. Birss worked for

Arthur Andersen Arthur Andersen was an American accounting firm based in Chicago that provided auditing, tax advising, consulting and other professional services to large corporations. By 2001, it had become one of the world's largest multinational corporat ...

until 1988 and after legal training at

City University London City, University of London, is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, and a member institution of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute, and became a university when The City Univ ...

he was

called to the bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

Middle Temple The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn an ...

in 1990, joining Three New Square, a specialist intellectual property set of

barristers' chambers In law, a barrister's chambers or barristers' chambers are the rooms used by a barrister or a group of barristers. The singular refers to the use by a sole practitioner whereas the plural refers to a group of barristers who, while acting as sol ...

. Birss was made a

Queen's Counsel In the United Kingdom and in some Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries, a King's Counsel (Post-nominal letters, post-nominal initials KC) during the reign of a king, or Queen's Counsel (post-nominal initials QC) during the reign of ...

in 2008. He was appointed a Specialist Circuit Judge on 5 October 2010 and assigned to the Patents County Court in 2010 and authorised to sit as a deputy High Court judge. On 13 May 2013, he was appointed a High Court judge, assigned to the

Chancery Division The High Court of Justice in London, known properly as His Majesty's High Court of Justice in England, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, are the Senior Courts of England and Wales. Its name is abbreviated as EWHC (England ...

, and received the customary

knighthood A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...

in the

2013 Special Honours The Special Honours are issued at the Queen's pleasure at any given time. The Special Honours refer the award of the Order of the Garter, Order of the Thistle, Order of Merit, Royal Victorian Order and the Venerable Order of St John, Order of St Jo ...

.List of Knights Bachelor
thegazette.co.uk; retrieved 5 September 2015. He was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal on 8 February 2021.

Cases

In 2011 he sat on the controversial case brought by ACS Law on behalf of MediaCAT, relating to file downloading on peer-to-peer filesharing networks. In 2012 he ruled on '' Temple Island v New English Teas'', a case where a photograph of an

AEC Routemaster The AEC Routemaster is a Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout, front-engined double-decker bus that was designed by London Transport Executive, London Transport and built by the Associated Equipment Company (AEC) and Park Royal Vehicles. The ...

London bus crossing

Westminster Bridge Westminster Bridge is a road-and-foot-traffic bridge over the River Thames in London, linking Westminster on the west side and Lambeth on the east side. The bridge is painted predominantly green, the same colour as the leather seats in the H ...

was found sufficiently similar to another photograph of the subject to constitute copyright infringement. In July 2012, Birss, sitting in the High Court, ruled that Samsung did not infringe Apple's registered design right in its

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

tablet. The judgment mirrored the decision made earlier in the US by a jury. In October 2012 the

Court of Appeal A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of t ...

upheld the judgment, including the publicity order imposed on Apple because it was necessary to clear up uncertainty in the market place after Apple took legal action in Germany against Samsung. The order required Apple to publicise that it had lost the case on its website and in the media. The Court of Appeal said:

Personal life

Birss lives with his wife and their three children at their family home in Hertfordshire. His recreations include beekeeping.

References

1964 births Living people Alumni of Downing College, Cambridge 21st-century English judges Chancery Division judges Knights Bachelor People educated at Largs Academy People from Thurso Anglo-Scots {{UK-law-bio-stub