The creation of a Unified Patent Litigation System seems to have a lot of political momentum these days, with one proposal following the other at fairly short intervals. This blog discusses the latest Council Presidency proposal of a draft agreement on a Unified Patent Court and draft Statute of 26 October 2011. While a lot of desirable progress has been made, the current draft agreement is still far from being ready for signature and requires both thorough consideration and amendment in several quite important aspects, not least as regards finances.

The Court of Justice of the European Union in clarifying the phrase ‘civil and commercial matters’ in Article 1 of the Brussels I Regulation (No 44/2001) ruled that said Regulation is also applicable to court decisions that contain an order to pay penalties to ensure compliance with a judgment given in a civil and commercial…

The smartphone forum wars still show no sign of abating with another application for an expedited patent revocation action before the English Court (ZTE v Ericsson [2011] EWHC 2709 (Pat)), following closely on the heels of the HTC v Apple case that we reported on last month (judgment dated 19 September 2011; post dated 6…

The Swiss company Bobst (hereinafter referred to as “Bobst”) is the holder of European patent No. 1 170 228 relating to a “device for controlling the means for feeding sheets in a machine”. After having had a saisie-contrefaçon carried out on 17 December 2007 in Fellmann Cartonnages’ premises in Soultz, in Haut Rhin (French administrative division), Bobst served a summons…

In its 2006 decision in the matter called GAT/LuK the ECJ held that Article 22-4 of the Brussels Regulation – which provides for exclusive national jurisdiction regarding the validity of patents and other registered rights – applies to all proceedings relating to the validity of a patent, irrespective of whether the issue is raised by…

In Denmark, as is probably the case in many other jurisdictions, in IP proceedings a case must be brought against each alleged infringer in that alleged infringer’s local jurisdiction (bailiff’s department of the local city court). In a recent decision from the Danish High Court (Eastern Division) (case reported in the Danish Legal Gazette UfR…

The District Court Duesseldorf held that the addressee may not refuse acceptance of a complaint according to Art. 8 para. 1 lit. a) of Regulation (EC) No. 1393/2007 on the Service in the Member States of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters if the court file contains objective evidence that the document…