Source: EURLEX
Language: en
Format: md

[JURE SUMMARY](#SM)

## JURE SUMMARY

The plaintiffs, a group of companies, mostly domiciled in UK petitioned in the English Patents Court the revocation of an allegedly invalid patent owned by the defendant, a company domiciled in the Netherlands. Earlier, the defendant had commenced proceedings in the Netherlands against the plaintiffs alleging acts of infringement of his Netherlands and his UK patent. The plaintiffs asserted that the English court had exclusive jurisdiction to determine the dispute over the UK patent.
The Court of Appeals holds that Articles 2, 5(3) Brussels Convention apply to actions in respect of intellectual property rights. The owner of a patent can take proceedings in respect of that patent either in the country of domicile of the defendant or where the infringement takes place. The court states that Article 6 Brussels Convention can only be applied if there is a connection between the claim made against the person not domiciled in the State of the court seised and the claim made against the party domiciled in that State. Article 6 Brussels Convention does not apply. Even though the actions stem from the same European patent application, they relate to two different national patent rights. As for Article 16(4) Brussels Convention, the court holds that it should be construed as differentiating between actions for infringement and proceedings concerned with validity. Where questions of infringement and validity both arise, as in this case, it is not possible to conclude there is infringement without validity being determined. Thus, Article 16(4) applies. As the UK courts have exclusive jurisdiction over the dispute concerning the UK patent, Article 24 does not provide jurisdiction to the courts of another Contracting State to grant provisional relief restraining infringement within the UK. However, the court refers several questions to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling as the issues are not acte clair.

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