German courts (and German attorneys) have been quite creative to improve the position of the patentee in litigation in the past. Last year the Olanzapine- decision of the Appeals Court in Düsseldorf, which rendered a preliminary injunction although the patent had been previously nullified by the Federal Patent Court, has caused a sensation in the…
I have to start this with a simple introduction into container technology: This is an intermediate bulk container (IBC): In principle such an IBC consists of three elements, the base, the outer steel cage and the inner bottle. The decisive issue in various patent infringement cases was whether the replacement of the bottle amounts to…
Where do you come from?
Düsseldorf.
Dussel-What?
Düsseldorf.
Aaaaaha. Where again is it?
China.
Interesting.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
