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Sir Colin Ian Birss (born December 1964 in Thurso) is a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales.
Birss was made a Queen's Counsel 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, and received the customary Knight Bachelor in the 2013 Special Honours. List of Knights Bachelor, thegazette.co.uk; retrieved 5 September 2015. He was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal on 8 February 2021. Upon his elevation to the Court of Appeal, he was appointed Deputy Head of Civil Justice in England and Wales.
In 2012 he ruled on Temple Island v New English Teas, a case where a photograph of an AEC Routemaster London bus crossing Westminster Bridge 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 tablet. The judgment mirrored the decision made earlier in the US by a jury. In October 2012 the Court of Appeal 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:
Birss is the first UK court of appeal judge to admit having used ChatGPT-generated content in a judgement. Saying he found it "Jolly useful" Source: The Law Gazette, 14 September 2023. https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/solicitor-condemns-judges-for-staying-silent-on-woeful-reforms/5117228.article
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