Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Munich I Regional Court won't adjudicate Nokia v. Daimler case tomorrow, schedules new trial for 7/23: stay looms large

The Nokia v. Daimler patent ruling (patent-in-suit: EP1671505 on a "redundancy strategy selection scheme") that the Munich I Regional Court had originally scheduled for tomorrow has been postponed.

Instead of announcing a decision tomorrow, the court has reopened the proceedings and scheduled another trial date for July 23, 2020. On that additional trial date, the focus will be on validity. Based on what I've heard about the order, Nokia now has to overcome a significant hurdle: it needs to dissuade the court from staying the case pending the parallel invalidation proceedings.

More than three months have passed since the original trial in this case. It speaks to the court's diligence that the judges identified a need for an additional court session in order to carefully analyze Daimler's invalidity defense. With so much at stake in the wider dispute, it would have been unfortunate if a rush to judgment had resulted in an enforceable injunction over a patent that shouldn't have been granted in the first place (at least not in the form in which the European Patent Office granted it).

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