SKE ordered to post £569,039 before its Crystal design claim reaches trial
A Patents Court judgment puts a number on pursuing a registered-design claim in the UK, and sets a January 2027 trial window for a lookalike dispute this category usually treats as a shopping problem.
Lookalike devices in this category are normally discussed as a retail hazard — how to recognise one, where not to buy. Occasionally the dispute goes somewhere that leaves a record, which is a courtroom.
The trade publication 2Firsts reports that the UK High Court (Patents Court) handed down a judgment on 20 August 2026 ordering Shenzhen SKE Technology Co. Ltd to provide security for costs of £569,039 before it can pursue its claim against Vapepen London Ltd, Parmeet Singh Kukreja, Bargain Busting Limited and Tarlochan Singh Bindra. The claim is for infringement of UK Registered Design No. 6213529 and for passing off, in relation to CRYSTAL-branded devices. We have not seen the judgment itself, and everything below follows that report.
What has actually been decided
Nothing about anybody’s products. Security for costs is a procedural order: it requires a claimant to put money where the court can reach it, so that a successful defence has something to recover its costs from. It carries no finding that any design was infringed, and no defendant has been found to have done anything wrong.
Per the report, the sum is staged — £77,000 by 11 September 2026, £42,039 three weeks before the pre-trial review, and £450,000 three weeks before trial. The judge is described as grounding the order in incomplete financial disclosure by the claimant rather than in its being based in China, which is the distinction to hold on to if you are tempted to read this as a precedent about foreign claimants. On that account it is not one.
Why it matters to the category
Because registered designs are almost never tested here in public. The visual language of a popular device gets copied within weeks, and the response is usually a takedown request, a customs seizure or an authentication scheme — remedies that leave no published reasoning behind them, as we noted when authentication codes went near-standard. A design right argued to judgment produces something the rest of the market can read.
Whether it gets that far is a separate question, and the order is a reminder of how expensive the answer is. A 14-day trial window is reported to open on 11 January 2027. Cases with a bill of this size settle often enough that a listed window is not a promise of a hearing.
Whatever the outcome, the object at the centre of the dispute is a nicotine product. Nicotine is an addictive chemical, and devices of this kind are sold only to adults old enough to buy them where they live — 21 and over in the United States, 18 and over across most other markets.