by Bernward Zollner It is often worthwhile to read again former judgments of the German Bun-desgerichtshof. In a judgment of 13 July 2010 – docket no. Xa ZR 126/07 – the court has discussed a patent on a staple cartridge for staples for surgical purposes (“Klam-mernahtgerät”). The court has stated that a disclosure is enabling…
In this case the FCJ considered the question of whether one of the co-owners of an invention is individually entitled to file a patent application for that invention. The Court held that in general an application is not permissible if it is made only in the name and on behalf of that co-owner. In such…
Preparations for the launch of the Unitary Patent system are progressing, despite the uncertainties and delays in the ratification process in Germany and the UK. The Case Management System (CMS) of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) will be ready ‘as of August 2017 and until the opening of the Court’, and tailored to prepare for the…
Chairman Alexander Ramsay of the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court regrets that a constitutional complaint has led to the suspension of the German ratification process of the UPC Agreement. In a message which was published on the committee’s website today, Ramsay states: ‘In Germany another layer of complexity has been added due to…
Germany has unfortunately no Fordham conference where an impressive number of eminent IP scholars, judges and practitioners, including even representatives of the EPO, get together once every year to discuss the state of the patent universe and future developments. However, Germany does luckily at least have its Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in…
In this case, the Federal Court of Justice considered the value of a secondary indicium for a decision on inventive step. The FCJ confirmed that if an invention differs from the decades-old general practice in the relevant technical field, then this may be an auxiliary criterion supporting inventive step. A full summary of this case…
In Germany, the winning party is able to recover a significant amount of its costs from the losing party. This cost reimbursement, which is based on a statutory fee schedule, depends on the value of the case. The amount of recoverable fees can be quite significant; the maximum in infringement proceedings would be around slightly…
The German Federal Council, the Bundesrat approved draft legislation to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement and to amend German patent law in its 31 March session. It means the German procedure to ratify the UPCA nears completion. The Parliament, the Bundestag, had already given its approval on 9 March 2017. In order to finalize…
As some of you may know, the Munich District Court has a special approach concerning the procedure for patent infringement proceedings since late 2009, called the “Munich Procedure”. The members of of the two patent litigation panels just recently had the opportunity to commit themselves to a slightly modified procedure and to render more precisely…
Will the Unitary Patent project become operational on 1 December 2017? The UPC Preparatory Committee has warned this date ‘is conditional and provided with the clear disclaimer that there are a number of factors that will dictate whether it is achievable.’ But for supporters of the UP and UPC, developments are encouraging. Crucial ratification procedures…
