When to suspend patent enforcement
In that decision, the court also held that the Federal Court of Justice, during a revision of the case, may itself suspend the enforcement if the invalidation happens later. That practice is, in essence, one of the consequences of Germany’s bifurcated system of patent litigation, in which ordinary courts have jurisdiction in patent infringement cases while a specialist federal court (the Federal Patent Court) has exclusive jurisdiction over invalidity actions.
The system dictates that plaintiffs can enforce injunctions even while an appeal is pending before the Federal Patent Court. If the patent is then invalidated, the courts have sought a way to mitigate the burden on defendants by suspending the infringement case until the final destiny of the patent has been determined.
