Hetti Hilge

In its latest ruling on FRAND and the Art. 102 TFEU defense, the OLG (Higher Regional Court) Karlsruhe put an emphasis on the ‘fairness’ of the licensing negotiation procedure and thus on the ‘F’…

The Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice, BGH) clarified the scope and limits of a prior use right of a manufacturer and supplier of components of a patented device (BGH, judgment of 14…

In a judgment in preliminary proceedings the Bundespatentgericht (German Federal Patent Court) granted the pharmaceutical company Merck the right to use European patent EP 1 422 218 and to continue…

Following the CJEU judgment Huawei vs ZTE (Case C-170/13) of 16 July 2015, the national courts continue refining the requirements for the assertion of standard-essential patents (SEPs). So far, the…

In one of the most highly observed patent cases in Europe in 2015, Case C-170/13, Huawei vs ZTE, the Court of Justice of the European Union with judgment of 16 July 2015 provided valuable and long…

The Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf (Higher Regional Court, appeal instance) just issued a court order on the admissibility of new prior art that the defendant discovered only in the second instance…

The Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice) in the decision Audiosignalcodierung (judgement of 3 February 2015, X ZR 69/13) confirmed the principle established in the Bundesgerichtshof…

The District Court of Duesseldorf will set up a third division (panel of judges) for patent infringement litigation. In addition, the Duesseldorf Court of Appeal will at least staff up, and possibly…

While in the past the German courts generally presumed that exposing a product on a trade fair constituted an infringing offer and, hence, a danger of repetition, the District Court of Mannheim…