Injunctions In Patent Law

Explains how the tailoring of injunctions in patent law works in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Israel.

In numerous jurisdictions, courts have realized that injunctive relief should not be available automatically in case of patent infringement. Particularly in the wake of the US Supreme Court decision in eBay v. MercExchange, it has become clear that granting an injunction may in some cases enable abuse by patent holders in order to obtain royalties exceeding significantly the value of patent-protected invention or that it may be manifestly against the public interest. This book offers a comparative study of the approaches towards injunctive relief taken by a number of leading jurisdictions, including the United States, the European Union (EU), selected EU Member States (Germany, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Poland), and China, India, Japan and South Korea. Responding to the growing need to provide a comprehensive and flexible framework for the application of injunctive relief, twelve patent law experts, both academics and well-known practitioners familiar with practice in their particular jurisdictions, offer analyses of such elements of patent law injunctions as the following: • access to standard-essential patents; • operations of patent assertion entities; • trolls and patent privateers; • equitable nature of injunctive relief as a source of flexibility; • abuse of right and competition law defences to injunctive relief as sources of flexibility; • analysis of EU instruments that could be used in the interpretation of Member State implementing laws; • conditions for the application of tools such as equity, competition law or general doctrines such as abuse of rights; • circumstances when injunctions should be denied to patentees even though a valid patent was infringed; • complex products cases where patents protect minor parts of the technologies; and • deficiencies and advantages of various approaches to injunctive relief. A proposal for an optimal model of granting injunctions is also included. Given that there is a growing consensus as to the circumstances when injunctions should be available to the patentees and the circumstances when injunctions should be denied, a comprehensive analysis of the various legal doctrines that justify a more flexible approach towards injunctive relief is warranted. This book will give patent law practitioners and in-house counsel the opportunity to draw from the experience of other jurisdictions where courts faced similar problems. Policymakers, patent office officials, academics and researchers in intellectual property law will also welcome this approach.

Through a collaboration among twenty legal scholars from North America, Europe and Asia, this book presents an international consensus on the use of patent remedies for complex products such as smartphones, computer networks, and the Internet of Things. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This academic work looks into various approaches for deciding on the grant of preliminary injunctions in patent litigation. An assessment is made of (judicial) practices that have been developed in national jurisdictions, Legal theory and Law and Economics. The lessons learned here can be of relevance for the future Unified Patent Court.

This book provides an overview of the current debate over whether a holder of a patent essential to an industry standard, who has promised to license such patented technology on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, may nevertheless obtain an injunction from a federal court or an exclusion order from the International Trade Commission against infringing products that implement the industry standard. The book first summarises several fundamental principles of patent law, then discusses the relationship between standard-setting organisations and FRAND licensing. It continues with an explanation of the role and duties of the International Trade Commission (ITC) and how there are different legal standards that apply to the award of injunctive relief in federal courts and in the ITC. Also discussed are the recent developments relating to standard-essential patents and FRAND licensing that have occurred in federal agencies responsible for antitrust enforcement, ITC cases, and congressional hearings.