The Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf (Higher Regional Court, appeal instance) just issued a court order on the admissibility of new prior art that the defendant discovered only in the second instance infringement proceedings. The defendant and appellant in the proceedings had requested a stay of the infringement appeal based on this new and relevant prior art until…

The Actavis v Eli Lilly UK litigation concerning pemetrexed (sold by Eli Lilly under the brand Alimta(®) has already been widely reported in light of Actavis’ innovative application to the English court for declarations of non-infringement (DNIs) of national designations of a European Patent in addition to the UK designation. The latest instalment concerns the…

The seizure of evidence is part of every patent litigator’s (pre-trial) arsenal. To some extent this measure is harmonised by the Enforcement Directive (art. 6 Directive 2004/48/EC). However, it does not yet have the same fire power in every European state. To get a taste of the Dutch state of play, specifically what the threshold…

Although this is a patent law blog a recently published decision of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in an appeal against a dismissed request for a preliminary injunction in the copyright sector is worth being discussed in more detail here. It will make life harder also for petitioners who see their hopes dashed before the…

As posted here the Swiss Federal Patent Court had to amend its Guidelines on Independence after the Swiss Federal Supreme Court had lifted a decision of the Federal Patent Court concerning the recusal of one of its non-permanent judges on 27 August 2013 in a case concerning the Nespresso coffee capsules. The revised Guidelines on…

The Italian Supreme Court recently (and surprisingly) said that inventors must be named as co-defendants in revocation actions. In 2010 I wrote a post concerning the requirement to name inventors as co-defendants in Italian revocation actions. I reported that the Court of Appeal of Milan had established a principle whereby named inventors had to be called…

by Hetti Hilge In two recent and surprising decisions the Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice) clarified the effects of a first instance decision nullifying the patent in suit on the enforcement of a parallel infringement finding (including an injunction) and, upon second review, remedied what it considers an unintended oversight by the legislator (“Planwidrige…