Adoption - application by Manx residents - power to transfer to county courtRe H (A Minor) (Isle of Man: Adoption): FD (Sumner J):3 February 2000A child who was the subject of care and freeing orders had been placed with a married couple who were resident in the Isle of Man.

However, as English freeing orders were no longer recognised in the Isle of Man, the foster parents had chosen to make an adoption application, relying on the freeing order, in the English court under s.14(2) of the Adoption Act 1976.

The case was heard and judgment given in chambers and is reported with leave of the judge on the basis of non-identification of the parties.Sarah Lambert (instructed by Banks Kelly) for the applicants; Michael Sternberg (instructed by the Official Solicitor) for the child.Held, granting the application, that it was clear from ss.14(2) and 72 of the Adoption Act 1976 that the Isle of Man was not considered to be within Great Britain for the purposes of s.62(3) of the 1976 Act which required adoption applications to be made in the High Court where the child was not in Great Britain at the time of the application; that, since there was power by virtue of art.

13(1) of the Children (Allocation of Proceedings) Order 1991 (SI 1991 No 1677), as amended by the Children (Allocation of Proceedings) (Amendment) Order 1993 (SI 1993 No 624 (L.7)) to transfer proceedings to the county court provided that it was appropriate and in the interest of the child for the proceedings to be determined there, the matter would be transferred to the Liverpool county court for determination.Inintellectual propertyCopyright - patchwork bedspreads not 'work of artistic craftsmanship'- drawings of patterns supplemented by accompanying words and figures 'graphic work'Vermaat and another v Boncrest Ltd: ChD (Evans-Lombe J):25 May 2000 The claimants brought an action against the defendant for infringing their copyright in a number of patterns for patchwork bedspreads and matching cushion covers which they had sent to a manufacturer in India, and in relation to a number of sample bedspreads made in India to the claimants' specification.

The defendant contended that no copyright was capable of subsisting in the claimants' patterns and samples, which issue was ordered to be tried as a preliminary issue.Andrew Norris (instructed by Royds Treadwell) for the claimants.

Michael Edenborough (instructed by Nabarro Nathanson) for the defendant.Held, declaring that copyright was capable of subsisting in the drawings but not in the samples, that copyright was only capable of subsisting in the designs for bedspreads and cushion covers if they constituted 'work of artistic craftsmanship' within s.4(1)(c) of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988; that for a work to be regarded as one of artistic craftsmanship, it must be possible fairly to say that the author was both a craftsman and an artist; that the samples produced by the Indian seamstress were works of craftsmanship, and pleasing to the eye, but were not sufficiently creative as to be artistic; that the fact that the drawings were not exclusively pictorial but needed, to be understood, the figures and words which appeared on them did not prevent them being graphic works, because even if the drawings could not stand alone they could nevertheless be described as a diagram containing instructions on how to produce an artistic work; and that therefore the drawings were 'graphic work' within the meaning of s.4(1)(a) of the Act.