Decision on Patent Rights and Unfair Competition

Facts

[A. GmbH] , a German company, filed a claim against [B. AG] , a Swiss company, requesting a declaration that it is a co-owner of the international patent application WO xxx and all resulting patent applications. [B. AG] filed a counterclaim, requesting that [A. GmbH] be prohibited from using the inventions and processes underlying the patent application WO xxx. The Federal Patent Court dismissed the claim and only partially entered the counterclaim. Both parties appealed this judgment to the Federal Supreme Court.

Considerations

The Federal Supreme Court dismissed the appeals. It concluded that [A. GmbH] had not sufficiently substantiated its standing, i.e. its entitlement as a co-inventor or successor in title of the inventors. Furthermore, in the view of the Federal Supreme…