GEISTWERT attended the “Munich International Patent Law Conference” this year.
Christop Ann ( Technischen Uni München) and Johannes Heselberger (Bardehle Pagenberg) led a selected circle of judges through “Case Studies” to enlighten the topic “Costs in Patent Litigation”.
Matthias Zigann (Presiding Judge at the Landgericht München I), Sir Christopher Floyd (Lord Justice of Appeal, Court of Appeal of England and Wales), James L. Robart (Federal Judge, US District Court for the Western District of Washington, Seattle), Klaus Grabinski (Federal Judge at the German Bundesgerichtshof) and others discussed the problems around court fees and attorneys´fees and reimbursement of any such in various countries and under the Unified Patent Court regime.
How can one prevent patent trolls from overrunning a specific market? Can a “David”-party in patent infringement proceedings prevail over a “Goliath”? Is there any winner in patent litigation regarding costs? The answers to these and other related questions are highly diverse in the various countries.
In all discussed scenarios the Austrian patent litigation systems proves to be cost-efficient, effective and highly-competent. For instance, the nullity defense in Germany triggers a relatively high value in suit, which is set with 125% of the value of the infringement proceedings. Nullity proceedings in Germany are therefore rather expensive. In Austria the applicant is basically free to assess the value in suit for nullity proceedings and in case of doubt a value of EUR 43.200,– applies. The proceedings as such are comparatively straight forward (even if – as we have to admit – they might be lengthly due to the workload of the Patent Office).
An important asset for patent litigation in Austria is the competent court: The Commercial Court in Vienna, in its three specialized patent senates including expert judges, has exclusive competence over patent infringement litigation in Austria
Next year the conference will deal with the topic “International Reach of Patents”: How far can patent protection reach territorially, if, e.g., a patent method is applied cross-border?
For more information see the webseite: www.munichinternationalpatentlawconference.de