The newly established 15th Patent Senate of the Appeals Court of Düsseldorf (Presiding Judge Dr. Ulrike Voß) has referred a number of questions concerning the calculation of damages in IP cases to the European Court of Justice. This opens the floor for the ECJ to talk about damages, as far as I know for the…
by Anne Katrin Schön On 12 June of this year, the German Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) in Karlsruhe concluded nullity appeal proceedings (X ZR 96/11) against the German part of European patent EP 1 071 556 B1 by dismissing the nullity action and upholding the patent as granted. Overruling the first-instance judgment 1 Ni…
The Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) is very satisfied with the opinion of the Advocate General (AG) of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) on the Spanish challenge. As chairman Paul van Beukering commented to Kluwer IP Law, ‘It couldn’t be much better than this.’ According to Van Beukering, the recent opinion…
The first actions of Spain and Italy against the decision of 25 EU member states to use the system of “enhanced cooperation” for the unitary patent package were rejected by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on 16 April 2013. One month earlier, Spain had launched on 22 March 2013 two new…
Software interoperability seems to be at the heart of any discussion to how to protect computer programs lately. Recent cases such as Oracle v. Google before the US Supreme Court, and SAS v. WPLtd before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) have probably something to do with it. The truth is that…
As readers will no doubt be aware, earlier this year the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court (“UPC”) drew up a short-list of candidate Judges after selecting them from an overwhelming raft of more than 1300 applications. This author knows of at least one Spanish candidate Judge whose expression of interest was discarded on…
There are no disadvantages to the Unitary Patent package, as it is an optional system. Willem Hoyng, lawyer of Hoyng Monegier and member of the Legal and the Expert Panel of the UPC Preparatory Committee, wrote this in a paper made available to Kluwer IP News. If companies don’t want to put all their eggs…
Dr. Simon Klopschinski In recent time the trademark, copyright and competition law senate (1st senate) of the Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) and one of the patent senates of the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court have issued conflicting decisions on the question of whether the presentation of a product at a trade fair in Germany constitutes…
Member States of the UPC Agreement reported on the national ratification processes during the 7th meeting of the UPC Preparatory Committee on 4 November 2014 in Brussels. According to the Preparatory Committee the situation looks promising since many Member States reported they hope to be able to ratify the UPCA in the course of 2015….
As part of their training, the first group of some 25 candidate Unified Patent Court (UPC) judges will follow internships at specialized patent courts, such as those in the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands. Paul van Beukering, Chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the UPC, told Kluwer IP Law that various options are currently…
