The Hanover Trade Fair is the world’s leading trade fair for industrial technology and will take place between 7 and 11 April 2014. The CeBIT is the world’s largest computer expo and will be held between 10 and 14 March 2014. With regard to these important trade fairs and many more taking place in Hanover,…

On 1 January 2014 the New Regulation (EU) No 608/2013 concerning customs enforcement of intellectual property rights will enter into force. Patent practitioners should note that national utility models and future unitary patents are also covered by this new Regulation. The “simplified proceedings” which have allowed customs to destroy goods without a prior court decision…

Under the legal principle of forfeiture of claims a patentee can deprive himself of claims for patent infringement if he asserts them in legal proceedings at such a late stage (time factor) that the infringer from an objective perspective could trust that he would not anymore be subjected to the claims and has made dispositions…

Ex parte measures are rather difficult to obtain in patent matters in Switzerland (except from evidence-protection measures). Nevertheless, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court had the opportunity to opine on this subject in a recent decision dated 21 August 2013. Although this case will become better known because it was the first time that the first…

A recent decision of the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) Düsseldorf now confirms that a holding company cannot easily dive away under the patent infringing activities of its subsidiaries. Background Many companies are designed in the form of a group, having a holding company at the top and a number of subsidiaries which are directly or…

The Mannheim Regional Court decided on March 8, 2013 (court docket: 7 O 139/12) that a supplier which is located abroad is regularly only liable for participating in patent-infringing acts in Germany if the foreign supplier learns, e.g. by means of a warning letter, that its supply of products to the German market may result in a patent infringement under German law and if the supplier does not refrain from further shipments into Germany.

In my earlier posts (here and here) I reported and commented on the first two phases of the Italian Pfizer antitrust case, in which the Italian Antitrust Authority (IAA) accused Pfizer of having abused of a dominant position by judicially enforcing patent rights against generic latanoprost in the Italian Courts. A small but potentially meaningful…

If the patentee has granted an exclusive license after filing an infringement action, an exclusive licensee is (in part) a legal successor of the patentee. Therefore, as long as the patentee’s claims are pending at another German court, the exclusive licensee has no right to sue with regard to the same subject matter due to…