Foreword
This new special edition of the Official Journal is the successor to the European National Patent Decisions Report (2004), which was the first compilation by the Legal Research Service of the boards of appeal of the European Patent Office of summaries of interesting patent decisions handed down by the courts of the EPC contracting states.
This project is motivated by the acknowledged need, expressed at the biennial European Patent Judges' Symposium and elsewhere, to improve the availability of information on national court rulings which concern the application of European patent law and, more generally, by the ongoing endeavours to increase harmonisation in the field.
The present report contains summaries of selected decisions from 14 different EPC contracting states, covering the years 2004 - 2011 and arranged according to topic, country and date. The selection was mainly based on the relevance of the decisions to important aspects of substantive patent law and aims to provide a balanced overview of cases both in terms of content and reference period. Also included are national decisions which discuss the approach of the EPO or make significant reference to the case law of the boards of appeal. A separate chapter dealing with European patents subject to litigation in multiple jurisdictions maps the outcomes of parallel proceedings in respect of the same European patent.
Of course, no summary can replace the study of the decision itself. In this regard, every effort has been made to ensure that the summaries in the three languages are true to the original. Nevertheless, no guarantee can be given for the completeness and accuracy of the respective contents, if only because of their conciseness and because the original text of the decision remains the only authentic and authoritative source.
I wish to thank the members of the Legal Research Service of the boards of appeal (Dept. 3.0.30), who with great commitment have produced the present report. My thanks also go to the EPO Language Service, without whose invaluable support this trilingual special edition of the Official Journal would not have been possible, as well as to all the other EPO staff who have helped produce this publication.
It is hoped that the report, even if only selective, will prove to be a useful tool for national judges, patent practitioners and academia and thereby serve as an additional means of promoting the harmonisation of patent law in Europe. With this in mind, we would like to encourage national judges, patent offices and other experts to continue in the future to send us court decisions of importance in the field.
Peter Messerli
Vice-President DG 3 (Appeals)
Chairman of the Enlarged Board of Appeal