Part of any smart patent litigation strategy is to seek the right venue. This is true for Europe as well as for the US. Among practitioners it is known that Texas is a preferred venue for patent litigation in the US, as the judges are assumed to be patentee friendly and, important, not inclined to immediately bow to defendant’s strategies to unduly complicate and manipulate litigation by throwing in  litigation tactics with the (sole) intention to complicate the litigation, so as to gain time and to force the plaintiff...

Is “independent invention” a cure against trolls in that it can be argued that infringement cannot be established in case of an “independent invention”? No it is not. A  lot of confusion, misunderstandings, half-truths, nonsensical quasi-lawerly talk exists around the term “independent invention“. The term is often “spittered” about as means against patent infringement actions by NPEs or patent trolls, but has no basis in patent law and lacks a common understanding and agreement on what it means...

The rumor goes that France is due to make a sea change shift towards supporting the EPLA, an initiative to harmonize the way patents are being litigated in Europe. The French Research Minister (heading the French Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche”) Valérie Pecresse, has sent a letter (or is about to do so) to her German counterpart, expressing the French support for EPLA. We have not been able to find any confirmation or hard evidence for this rumor from anyone yet, nor from the French delegates...

France’s Constitutional Council is due to rule on the constitutionality of the London Agreement by the end of next week. Ratification by France is the chief remaining obstacle stopping the London Agreement coming into force. The “London Agreement” is about translations of patents in Europe and is drafted as a Protocol on the European Patent Convention. It has been signed by 10 countries to date. To enter into force, at least 8 countries must ratify it including France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The current...