by Miriam Büttner In a recent decision of 15 September 2011 (ref. no. 4b O 99/11) the District Court of Düsseldorf (LG Düsseldorf) found that a non-final decision of the utility model cancel-lation division of the German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO), with which the utility model was declared (partially) invalid, is not a sufficient…
On 8 November 2011, in the case of Fresenius v Carefusion, the English Court of Appeal declared that “the Earth Closet order should be consigned to the place that bears its name.” The “Earth Closet” or See v Scott Paine Order was an idiosyncratic but potentially very important principle of English patent law. The Order…
In a judgment handed down on 11 November 2011, the Spanish Supreme Court has rejected an appeal filed by four Spanish pharmaceutical companies against a judgment from the Court of Appeal of Barcelona (Section 15), which had rejected a revocation action filed against patent EP 409,281 (Calcium salt of Atorvastatin) owned by Warner-Lambert. Applying the…
by Dr. Ulrich Pross, rospatt osten pross Sec. 522 Civil Procedure Act (CPA) provided that courts competent to hear appeals on fact (Berufungsgerichte) can and must reject an appeal (Berufung) immediately without hearing if – the appeal has no chance of success, – the case is not of fundamental significance, and – neither the development…
On 20 September 2011, in a patent infringement case, the French Cour de cassation issued an important decision in which, for the first time, it refers to and relies on “the principle according to which a person may not contradict themselves to the detriment of another person“, i.e. on the estoppel. With this decision, the French supreme…
The Swedish Supreme Court held that in cases where the infringing act is the sale of infringing goods, the damage (in this case the right to reasonable compensation for use of the invention and compensation for loss of profit) occurs as of the date a sales agreement is entered into, and the 5-year statute of…
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…
Although plans appear to be underway to establish a centralised enforcement court for patents in Denmark, the current position is that a patentee enforcing his or her rights, must turn to the local jurisdiction where the alleged infringer is domiciled. For the time being, therefore, all interlocutory injunction cases based on patents are heard by…
A recently published decision of the Court of Turin in the case Merck Sharpe & Dohme versus Sandoz (decision of 7 April 2011), concerning dorzolamide hydrochloride timolol maleate eye drops, provides an interesting interpretation of the Italian rules governing territorial jurisdiction in the case of the infringement of pharmaceutical patents. MS&D sued Sandoz before the…
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…
