This case concerns the relationship between two co-owners of a patent and in particular the issue of whether and under what conditions one co-owner can claim compensation in respect of the use of the…
In this case the Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) allowed a compulsory licence under a patent for a pharmaceutical active ingredient for the first time ever. The Court held that a public interest in…
A data sequence can only be regarded as a product directly obtained by a patent-protected process if it has tangible technical properties that are directly imparted on it by this method, and if the…
In March our partner Hetti Hilge reported on a preliminary injunction by which the Federal Patent Court granted Merck an interlocutory compulsory license for Merck’s HIV drug Isentress in the light…
by Bernward Zollner
It is often worthwhile to read again former judgments of the German Bun-desgerichtshof. In a judgment of 13 July 2010 – docket no. Xa ZR 126/07 – the court has discussed a patent…
In this case the FCJ considered the question of whether one of the co-owners of an invention is individually entitled to file a patent application for that invention. The Court held that in general…
Germany has unfortunately no Fordham conference where an impressive number of eminent IP scholars, judges and practitioners, including even representatives of the EPO, get together once every year to…
In this case, the Federal Court of Justice considered the value of a secondary indicium for a decision on inventive step. The FCJ confirmed that if an invention differs from the decades-old general…
In Germany, the winning party is able to recover a significant amount of its costs from the losing party. This cost reimbursement, which is based on a statutory fee schedule, depends on the value of…
As some of you may know, the Munich District Court has a special approach concerning the procedure for patent infringement proceedings since late 2009, called the “Munich Procedure”. The members of…
