The court held that the plaintiff who is listed as proprietor of the patent in the patent register is allowed to claim both injunctive relief and damages as well as claims to rendering accounts and provision of information to prepare the damage claim for all infringing acts committed during the time of his/her enlistment, despite…
The Federal Court of Justice presented the following questions to the European Court of Justice: 1. How should the term ‘human embryos’ in Article 6 para. 2 lit. c Directive 98/44 EC be understood? a) Are all development stages of human life from the fertilisation of an egg cell included or are additional conditions required…
The German Federal Supreme Court decided that a forwarder has no procedural obligation to provide essential information for an eligible denial. Hence, a forwarder can plead ignorance concerning the accordance of the transported good with technical teaching of the claimed invention. A forwarder has no general auditing duty concerning infringement of industrial property rights by…
The District Court Düsseldorf clarified its case law regarding the requirement of a complete translation of patents into the German language and how to deal with errors in such translations. Besides, the Court held that the patent is to be considered valid as long as there is no binding decision on its invalidity. Hence, a…
The Court of Appeals Karlsruhe has decided that under specific circumstances the enforcement by a non-manufacturing licensing company of an injunction based on a standard-essential patent may be provisionally suspended against security payment by the defendant until the decision of the appeal. Although as a general rule of German procedural law the interest of a…
For an invention to be considered obvious it is usually necessary that there are additional incentives that go beyond the identification of the technical problem and lead the person skilled in the art to search the solution for this technical problem on the path of the invention. A full summary of this case has been…
The Federal Patent Court has decided that an inventive step according to Article 56 EPC is not established if the person skilled in the art has only to conduct routine exploratory analysis based on the prior art. Against this legal background the Federal Patent Court nullified the patent in suit arguing that in a situation…
The Federal Court of Justice clarified the interdependencies of its case law concerning computer implemented inventions. An application has technical character if a non technical feature is inserted in a technical process. The comprehensive inspection of the object of the application does not allow discretionary weighing of technical and nontechnical parts. Due to the exemption…
