As a venue for court proceedings, Austria has many advantages – this particularly applies to technology and intellectual property related disputes:
Requests for preliminary injunctions (“PI”) are not subject to any urgency requirement. Within the applicable statute of limitation (6 months for unfair competition suits and 3 years for intellectual property suits, such as trademark- and patent-infringement suits), you may therefore request a PI in any case; irrespective of how long you took in order to prepare the proceedings after you were made aware of the infringement. As an owner of an intellectual property right, you thus have more time for preparing the PI motion, particularly in contrast to Germany.
Furthermore, the decision in first instance proceedings concerning the infringement of technical intellectual property rights is already rendered by a senate comprising one technical expert. Such proceedings are moreover centralized at the Vienna Commercial Court that has exclusive jurisdiction over such matters. In 99.9% of the cases, the technical expert is a patent attorney who is perfectly familiar with the concerned technical field (e.g. chemistry, engineering or electro-technics). This, by the way, is also true for PI proceedings. Also, the appellate decisions rendered by the Vienna Court of Appeal and the final decisions rendered by the Supreme Court follow this principle. Therefore, the quality of the Austrian courts’ decisions in proceedings concerning the infringement of technical intellectual property rights is exceptional.
For these reasons alone, you are litigating with a view in Austria. This is finally supported by the view that you can enjoy from the Vienna Commercial Court (see cover photo) that is centrally located near the city centre. An even better view can be enjoyed from the Vienna Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court – both are located in the same building near Vienna’s “Ringstrasse”. It features a rooftop café with a rooftop terrace. From there, you can see most of Vienna’s major sights.