Last week, Florian Mueller published a post on his new site ipfray, titled Grand Chamber of European Court of Justice takes patent case—question of cross-border jurisdiction.  The case at issue is BSH Haugeräte GmbH v. Electrolux AB, and although the questions referred date back to May 2022 and the case has already been heard by a regular chamber, the CJEU’s decision to assign the matter to a “Grand Chamber” of fifteen judges is recent. The questions referred are: Is Article 24(4) of Regulation (EU) 1215/2012 1 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2012 on jurisdict ..read more

An article I only recently came across is Joseph Lau's FRAND Defences Against the Grant of Injunctive Relief:  Applying Huawei v. ZTE in Singapore and China, 16 Asian J. Comp. L. 33 (2021).  Here is  a link to the article, and here is the abstract: From the size of A4 paper to 5G in the telecommunications sector, standards are ubiquitous. Standard essential patents (SEPs), which protect technology essential to standards, enable their proprietors to gain significant market power. Antitrust authorities therefore scrutinize the exercise of SEPs for breaches of competition law. In t ..read more

Lisa Van Dongen has posted a paper on ssrn titled Proportionality and Flexibilities in Final Injunctive Relief, forthcoming in The Unified Patent Court: Problems, Possible Improvements and Alternatives (Alain Strowel et al. eds., Ledizioni, 2023).  Here is a link to the paper, and here is the abstract:           In 2006, the patent world was shaken to the core by eBay v MercExchange, a case that questioned several basic principles in patent enforcement that were considered well established. The US Supreme Court sent a clear signal that patent r ..read more

Multiple sources are reporting on a March 28, 2024 judgment of the Delhi High Court, awarding Ericsson the equivalent of approximately USD$30 million in a SEP dispute against a firm called Lava.  I have not yet succeeded in obtaining a copy of the judgment, which is said to be quite long, but recommend that readers take a look at Florian Mueller's discussion of it on his new site, ipfray.  I probably will have some comments on the decision after I obtain a copy, read it, and digest it, which might however take a while ..read more

For anyone finding themselves in southeastern Spain on April 19, Alicante IP Colloquia is putting on an in-person event at noon titled «Hacia la cuantificación del daño» ("Toward the quantification of damages").  Panelists will be Judges Florencio Molina López and Gustavo Andrés Martin Martín.  The event is free, but registration is mandatory (link available here).  Judge Molina López is the author of a recent book on protective letters (see here).  I'm guessing the panelists will address the recent decision of the Madrid Court of Appeals in Eli Lilly v. Teva, previously no ..read more

The case is Biomedical Device Consultants & Laboratories of Colorado, LLC v. ViVitro Labs, Inc., nonprecedential opinion published last Thursday and authored by Judge Lourie, joined by Judges Dyk and Stark.  Plaintiff BDC, which manufactures and sells heart valve durability testing devices, sued its competitor ViVitro for infringement of U.S. Patent 9,237,935, which is “directed toward accelerated rate fatigue testing devices for prosthetic valves” (p.2). The district court denied BDC’s motion for a preliminary injunction, “finding that it failed to establish a likelihood of success o ..read more

The decision is Brumfield v. IBG, LLC, opinion by Judge Taranto, joined by Judges Prost and Hughes.  The case involved four patents, relating to “improved graphical user interfaces for commodity trading and methods for placing trade orders using those interfaces” (p.3), owned by Trading Technologies International, Inc. (TT).  (They are now owned by a trust of which Mr. Brumfield, the appellant named in the caption, is the sole trustee.  The court refers to “TT” as the entity in interest throughout.)  TT alleged that IBG infringed various claims of these patents, and that “t ..read more

1. Enrico Bonadio and Dyuti Pandya recently published a post on the Kluwer Patent Blogtitled China’s Supreme People Court decides FRAND dispute in ACT v Oppo.  The post links to several other sources discussing the SPC’s December 2023 decision in this case, previously noted here, including  MA Butian, Second-instance judgment in ACT v Oppo sheds light on comparable agreements and how to find fault in SEP licensing negotiations, Global Competition Review, Feb. 1, 2024; AFD China Intellectual Property Law Office, SPC Awards ACT over 15.39 Million Yuan in OPPO Patent Dispute, Rejecting ..read more

The case is In re California Expanded Metal Products Co., nonprecedential opinion by Judge Taranto, joined by Judges Dyk and Mayer.  According to the opinion, California Expanded Metal Products Co. (CEMCO) “is the current owner of the five patents at issue in this case,” which “generally describe and claim fire-retardant assemblies for the top of a wall, the assemblies including an intumescent strip that seals construction joints or gaps when exposed to heat” (p.2).  “At the time of trial, there were two dominant participants in the market for fire-retardant head-of-wall products tha ..read more

The German Federal Supreme Court recently held that patentees can recover compensation for springboard convoyed goods and services.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read on. The decision is BGH, Judgment of Nov. 14, 2023, I ZR 30/21—Polsterumarbeitungsmaschine.  It can be found in 2/2024 Mitteilungen der deutschen Patentanwälte pp. 75-79; you can also find a short write-up about the case by Dr. Matthias Meyer and Dr. Daniel Misch here, and an English-language machine translation courtesy of Dr. Tillman Müller-Stoy on LinkedIn, here. The patent in suit, EP 776 760, claimed ..read more