On 6 October 2011, Commercial Court number 5 of Barcelona handed down a judgment that has revisited the fine border between the safe territory of so-called “preparatory acts” and the prohibited region of “offers for sale”. MSD filed a patent infringement action against a Spanish company that had obtained marketing authorisation and price to market…
Patentability of an invention is not excluded by the mere fact that the only feature of the patent claim not comprised in the state of the art is a dosage regime. Click here for the full text of this case. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
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…
The smartphone forum wars still show no sign of abating with another application for an expedited patent revocation action before the English Court (ZTE v Ericsson [2011] EWHC 2709 (Pat)), following closely on the heels of the HTC v Apple case that we reported on last month (judgment dated 19 September 2011; post dated 6…
by Rüdiger Pansch, rospatt osten pross And here we are again with more recent decisions on the bulk container paradox (see Brian’s post Bottling the After-Market; Max’s post on Patent Law and Philosophy; my post on Entitative Elements of Bulk Containers). Imagine you have an IBC (Intermediate Bulk Container), just as this one: Now, you…
The German Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) issued a nullity appeal judgment on 12 July 2011 in which the requirements for an amendment to be held allowable under Art. 123(2) EPC and Sec. 38 German Patent Act seem to have been further tightened as opposed to the previous practice. The decision (case number X ZR…
Co-author Christiaen Dekoninck The Ghent Court of Appeal dismissed the claims of the German patent holder Grumbach and its Dutch licensee, Bollegraaf Recycling Machinery, relating to the Carbo Separator, a paper sorting device sold by their Dutch competitor Wagensveld to the Stora Enso group’s Belgian subsidiary. The Court affirmed the earlier decision of the President…
The English High Court has refused to grant summary judgment to LG Electronics in relation to validity of certain patents, holding that, due to the uncertainty of the legal issue concerning the confidentiality of the prior disclosure relied on, the matter was not relevant for summary judgment. LG Electronics (“LG”) sued Sony for infringement of…
As is known, damages for patent infringement may be calculated using one of three calculation methods, i.e. infringer’s profit, licence analogy and lost profit. Two recent decisions, one by the Higher Regional Court Frankfurt regarding infringer’s profit and one by the Regional Court Munich regarding license analogy, are evidence of actual tendencies being taken by…
