by Bernward Zollner The term “offering” must be understood in a broad sense. It is sufficient that the per-son who is offering draws the attention of the public to the offered object so that – clearly – advertisements or brochures can be qualified as an offer in the sense of the patent statute. In this…
by Stefan Lieck In a judgement of 17 January 2013 (docket no. I-2 U 87/12), the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court confirmed its previous case law according to which the issuance of a preliminary injunction against generic companies based on patent law is possible under less stringent conditions. According to the case law of the Düsseldorf…
One of the big difficulties in the everyday evaluation of inventive step revolves around the role that the problem underlying the invention should play in such evaluation. Two examples of more recent decisions of the German Federal Court of Justice are provided here to illustrate “the problem”. In its decision Kosmetisches Sonnenschutzmittel III (X ZR…
by Stephan von Petersdorff-Campen The amount at issue in a legal claim serves as the basis for establishing the court fees and lawyers’ fees to be reimbursed to the successful party. The consequences (including indictable consequences) of a claim value that has been set too low have previously been the object of contributions to this…
The FCJ decided in the recently published decision “Wundverband” [Wound Dressing] “Moelnlycke Health Care v. BSN Medical” (docket X ZR 70/12) on 19 February 2013 that if patentee has granted an exclusive license after he has filed an infringement action, an exclusive licensee will be (in part) a legal successor of the patentee. As a…
The Federal Court of Justice in Germany held in its recent judgment of January 22, 2013 (court docket: X ZR 70/11) that to claim co-inventorship the contribution of the co-inventor need only be found in parts of the description of the patent and does not have to be found in the claims. The Court stated…
The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) addressed some interesting questions on patents protecting methods relating to data in the decision “MPEG-2-Videosignalcodierung” (“MPEG-2 video signal encoding”), judgement of 21 August 2012, X ZR 33/10. This all was round up by explanations on patent exhaustion in the context of test purchases. In simple terms, the…
In its “Leflunomid” decision of 24 July 2012 (Case X ZR 126/09), the FCJ declared a patent claim to be invalid which covered a combination of leflunomide and teriflunomide, on the grounds that it had long been known in the prior art (for 100 years) that some leflunomide spontaneously and unavoidably converts teriflunomide over time…
by Hetti Hilge The District Court Duesseldorf stayed a case between Huawei and ZTE concerning mobile and base stations within the LTE standard and referred five question to the CJEU (docket No. 4b O 104/12). The court wants to clarify under what circumstances an infringement court has to consider a compulsory license defense in a…
The Regional Court Dusseldorf submitted on 21 March 2013 a referral to the CJEU with five questions regarding the interpretation of Art. 102 TFEU relating to the antitrust objection of compulsory license in patent infringement actions. The patent infringement action at issue is concerned with a LTE-standard-essential patent. The plaintiff declared its readiness via the…
