by Stephan von Petersdorff-Campen The amount at issue in a legal claim serves as the basis for establishing the court fees and lawyers’ fees to be reimbursed to the successful party. The consequences (including indictable consequences) of a claim value that has been set too low have previously been the object of contributions to this…
by Hetti Hilge The District Court Duesseldorf stayed a case between Huawei and ZTE concerning mobile and base stations within the LTE standard and referred five question to the CJEU (docket No. 4b O 104/12). The court wants to clarify under what circumstances an infringement court has to consider a compulsory license defense in a…
by Henrik Timmann There is a saying in Germany: Two lawyers add up to three different opinions. Well, for a long time the Federal Patent Court seemed to have been inspired by this saying when deciding on the reimbursement of lawyers’ fees in nullity actions. Background Most of you will know about the bifurcated system…
In a recent decision (BGH X ZR 7/12) the Bundesgerichtshof had to decide whether the Appeal Court violated its general obligation to elucidate the facts relevant for the decision by not ordering the inspection of a machine by an expert. The underlying case concerned a claim for patent infringement by use of a patented process….
by Bernward Zollner In a case called “Produktionsrückstandsentsorgung” the German Bundesgerichtshof has discussed a case in which the claim of the litigious patent had been amended and narrowed with respect to the scope of protection after the judgment of the appeal court had been handed down. The appeal court therefore, could not have discussed the…
by Miriam Büttner On 27 November 2012 the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) decided on the ethical problematical question, if neural precursor cells which origin from human stem cells are patentable or not (case no. X ZR 58/07). Background of the decision: Subject of this BGH decision is the validity of German patent no. 197…
The number of patent infringement suits filed with the District Court of Düsseldorf remains constantly high. In addition to the two existing patent litigation chambers (chamber 4a presided by Dr. Crummenerl and chamber 4b presided by Ms Voss), the Court now installed a third 4c chamber. This new 4c chamber already started its work at…
by Hetti Hilge The German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) confirmed that the patent owner may recover the infringer’s profit in so far, and only in so far, as it results from the use of the patent (BGH, judgment of 24.07.2012, X ZR 51/11 – Flaschenträger). With this decision the X. Senate (bench) of the BGH…
This past week I had an interesting hearing at the EPO where an opposition was based, inter alia, on public prior use. The opposition division heard a number of witnesses on the question whether the features of a specific device had been publicly available. Prior to the hearing, the opponent had to admit that there…
Almost one year ago the European Court of Justice (CJEU) “clarified” the law on supplementary protection certificates. On November 24, 2011 it rendered its verdict in the “Medeva” case (C-322-10). One should not forget that “Georgetown” (C -422/10) was rendered on the same day and only one day later, the Yeda (C-518/10), Queensland (C-630/10) and…
