International Patent Litigation - Facebook Ireland v Voxer IP
Sarah Stierch / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Birss) Facebook Ireland Ltd v Voxer IP LLC [2020] EWHC 1806 (Pat) (7 July 2020) Yesterday, I explained in International Patent Litigation - Nicoventures Trading Ltd v Philip Morris 16 July 2020 that defendants to German patent infringement claims often bring actions to revoke the UK designation of the same European patent because it is not possible to challenge the validity of a patent in infringement proceedings in Germany. The thinking behind that strategy is the courts in countries that are party to the European Patent Convention take account of each other's decisions on the same patent. That strategy works, however, only if the UK revocation action is decided before the German infringement one. To ensure that it does, the court may have to order the expedition of the UK trial as it did in Nicoventures...