Germany

Biologics, Case Law, Exceptions to patentability, Germany

/

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…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Germany, Inventive step, Public prior use

/

The Federal Court of Justice further clarifies the scope of disclosure of a prior art document and the criteria for determining inventive step after the landmark decision ‘Olanzapin’. More specifically, the Court ruled that: a) a prior art disclosure of an enantiomeric compound does not clearly and unambiguously disclose the actual enantiomers unless the disclosure…

Case Law, Enforcement, Germany, Injunction

/

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…

Added matter, Case Law, Germany, Mechanical Engineering

/

The Federal Court of Justice confirmed the legal reasoning of the Federal Patent Court that a company that continued the business of another company, while it was founded independently from the continued company and does not take over the trade name under which it conducted business, is not bound by a non-contest clause between the…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Damages, Germany, Validity

/

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…

Case Law, Enforcement, Germany, Injunction, Procedure

/

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…

(Compulsory) license, Case Law, Germany, Injunction, SEP

/

The Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) ruled that a defendant in a patent infringement suit may successfully raise an antitrust defense against the issue of an injunction where the asserted patent is standard-essential and the defendant has tried to obtain a license to the patent under reasonable conditions. The full summary of this case has been published…

Case Law, Germany, Inventive step, Mechanical Engineering, Revocation

/

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…

Amendments, Case Law, Extent of Protection, Germany, Mechanical Engineering, Scope of protection

/

The Federal Court of Justice ruled that the subject matter of a patent does not extend beyond the content of the application as filed when terms are used in the claims that are not literally used in the application text but are summarizing words for longer descriptions in the application as filed. A full summary…