How much patent litigation is there in Europe? - Germany
Part one of a six part series reviewing the patent litigation landscape in Europe - Patent litigation in Germany.
K. Cremers et al., “Patent Litigation in Europe”, Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung GmbH, Discussion Paper No.13-072 (September 2013)
The German Courts hear by far the largest number of patent cases in Europe. Between 2000 and 2008, 5,121 infringement cases were heard in the Düsseldorf, Mannheim and Munich Courts with a further 1,618 revocation cases having been heard in the Bundespatentgericht. Düsseldorf, Mannheim and Munich were the most active infringement courts in the period in question, collectively accounting for around 80-90% of infringement cases. Allowing for cases heard in other regional courts this suggests over 8,100 cases were heard in Germany over that nine year period.
The cases heard in the Düsseldorf, Mannheim and Munich Courts are a mixture of patent infringement cases, utility model infringement cases and cases concerning inventorship disputes. The exact numbers of such cases vary year by year, but a separate review of cases heard in the Mannheim Court suggests that inventor compensation cases accounted for between 1 and 5% of the Mannheim court docket between 2005 and 2007 with utility model cases accounting for a further 6-10% of cases.
A relatively large number of the cases heard in the German Courts concern German national patents rather than patents granted by the European Patent Office with European patent disputes only accounting for 57.6% of the cases in Düsseldorf, Mannheim and Munich between 2000 and 2008.
