Earlier today, the Swiss Federal Courts (including the Swiss Federal Patent Court) published a joint press release concerning their annual reports 2013.
The number of infringement and/or validity cases submitted to the Federal Patent Court in its second year of operation corresponds to the expectations. In total, 22 ordinary proceedings on the merits and 11 summary proceedings were brought before the Court (this is an increase of almost 100% compared to the 17 new cases that had been filed with the Federal Patent Court in 2012).
The Court dealt with 23 cases in 2013. This means that the ratio between output and input is roughly 69%.
In its second business year, the Federal Patent Court put the lid on a total of 18 proceedings on the merits. 16 of these cases ended with a mutual settlement. This number is very high and it is not likely that this will be the standard in the future. The Federal Patent Court expects that approx. 50 % of the cases can be settled by mutual agreement in the longer term.
The system of two full-time and 37 part-time legal as well as technical expert judges (appointed on a case-by-case basis) proved to be advantageous also in the second year. The Federal Patent Court was able to fill the different chambers with qualified specialists of the respective fields of expertise. It is likely that this competence of the court was also welcomed by the parties and made it possible that such a high percentage of cases was resolved by mutual settlements. In the Federal Patent Court the parties normally enter into settlement talks after having heard the preliminary assessment of the case by the judges.
________________________
To make sure you do not miss out on regular updates from the Kluwer Patent Blog, please subscribe here.
