Two senates at the Appeal Court Duesseldorf now competent for patent infringement cases

by Bernward Zollner

Since the beginning of 2014 a second senate for patent infringement cases (under presiding judge Dr. Ulrike Voss) has commenced to work. The already existing senate (under presiding judge Dr. Thomas Kühnen) could share the pending cases with the new sister-senate. This resulted in a schedule for the time between the submission of the appeal reasons and the date for the oral hearing which is considerably shorter than in previous years. Whereas in previous years this time between the submission of the appeal reasons and the oral hearing was more or less one year it is now shortened to six months. This new schedule will considerably accelerate the appeals in patent infringement cases.