Patent litigation chamber
Patent litigation chambers are defined in accordance with German civil procedure law at some regional courts that handle patent infringement disputes and employee invention disputes. Special rules of jurisdiction apply to them.
sense
According to § 143 Patent Act , the regional courts are responsible for patent infringement cases. Since civil court disputes over patent infringements are on the one hand often complex and have certain peculiarities, but on the other hand do not occur very often in terms of number, the allocation of such proceedings according to the conventional rules of the Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO) would mean that they are widely spread across the 115 regional courts in Germany would be scattered pending and would then not be able to build up special experience in handling such cases at any of the regional courts. In order to counteract this, patent disputes are concentrated in a few district courts in which patent litigation chambers have been set up, so that they arise there more often and can lead to a useful wealth of experience there.
For similar considerations, disputes relating to employee invention law are assigned to the patent litigation chambers.
Legal basis
With regard to procedural law, the Patent Act largely refers to the ZPO. The ZPO would regulate the local jurisdiction of the courts for patent infringement cases in the conventional way (often the defendant's seat or the place of the illegal act). But already in the Patent Act § 143 Abs. 2 it is laid down that the responsibilities can be concentrated beyond the corresponding regulations of the ZPO. The regulatory authority for this was assigned to the federal states, also across their respective state borders, which they can also transfer to the administration of justice. The competence for employee inventor law suits is assigned to the patent litigation chambers by § 39 ArNErfG.
Situation today
The states used the possibility of concentrating patent infringement disputes to the effect that today patent litigation chambers are set up in twelve of a total of 115 regional courts throughout Germany, which are exclusively responsible for patent litigation. Some countries do not have their own regional court with a patent litigation chamber, but have transferred jurisdiction for such cases to regional courts in other countries. Ten federal states each have a regional court with patent litigation chambers. Bavaria has two regional courts with patent litigation chambers.
There are patent litigation chambers today at the regional courts of Munich I, Nuremberg, Mannheim, Frankfurt, Saarbrücken, Erfurt, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Düsseldorf, Braunschweig, Berlin and Hamburg.
Delimitation: Federal Patent Court
The Federal Patent Court does not form any of the patent litigation chambers. The Federal Patent Court is not responsible for infringement cases, but is the initial instance for nullity actions and appeals body for decisions of the German Patent and Trademark Office.
example
A Stuttgart-based small company with only regional importance is to be sued for patent infringement. The ZPO would assign this case locally to the LG Stuttgart. However, the situation in Baden-Württemberg was regulated in such a way that the LG Mannheim is responsible for patent matters for the whole of Baden-Württemberg. So the LG Mannheim would be responsible for the hypothetical case.
