Nullity Plaintiff still has a need for legal relief even after expiry of the patent as long as Patentee has not given up claims against customers of Plaintiff. A conventional personal computer with telephone functions does not render obvious to implement one of its features in a mobile phone.
Case date: 16 January 2018
Case number: X ZR 89/15
Court: Federal Court of Justice of Germany
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
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Before everyone goes crazy with respect to the remark about inventive step, please read the ruling yourself. The patent in question is old and from a time when there were no smartphones. The FCJ also did not give the ruling a corresponding headnote(“Leitsatz”) and the present ruling is not a landmark decision but only deciding a very specific case.