Most IP disputes don’t end in a clean win. They end in a split — you carry some grounds, lose others, and then discover the scoreboard the court actually cares about is the costs order. The Full Federal Court’s costs ruling in Comino v Watson Webb Pty Ltd (Costs) [2026] FCAFC 88 is a clean illustration. Having largely prevailed in the underlying appeal over a misappropriated valve design, the manufacturer was still awarded only 50% of its costs of the main appeal. The reason: the success and failure of each party was mixed, and the Court took a broad-brush approach to who paid for what. For an IP-intensive business, that is the quiet lesson — IP litigation costs in Australia are not a prize for being mostly right; they are an apportionment of who caused which work, and even party/party recovery covers only a fraction of what you actually spent. (The companion read on how this dispute arose is When a Sign-Off Becomes Someone Else’s Design, on the substantive decision.)

Two strategic signals matter for in-house IP counsel, GCs and founders weighing whether and how to fight. First, contrast the main appeal with the unjustified-threats claim, where the Court applied the orthodox rule that costs follow the event — a reminder that a clean, separable win is rewarded cleanly, while a sprawling multi-issue case invites discounting. The discipline, then, is to prune your grounds to the ones you can actually carry, because every issue you lose is an issue you may fund for the other side. Second, watch the enforcement-letter trap: the parties ended up litigating an unjustified-threats appeal because a demand letter was sent over a design whose ownership was contested. Under section 77 of the Designs Act 2003 (Cth), a threatened party can seek a declaration that the threats are unjustified, an injunction and damages — so a cease-and-desist letter you can’t back in court becomes its own liability, a pattern that echoes the entitlement risk in When a Departing Engineer Files a Patent and the disclosure discipline in Be prepared before you engage. The takeaway is unglamorous but durable: fix ownership before you build, narrow the fight before you file, and never send a threat you aren’t ready to prove.