Patent Law

An article of the above title by Gregory J. Urbanchuk and James R. Tumbridge appears in the Summer 2008 issue of the American Bar Association's Intellectual Property Litigation (available to members only).

The rules for quantifying patent damages varies among the states of the European Union.  Mr. Urbanchuk and Mr. Tumbridge write that, "[h]owever, on April 24, 2004, the European Parliament and Council adopted the EU IP Enforcement Directive. The primary purpose of the directive was to create a level playing field for the enforcement of intellectual property rights across the member states by establishing a homogenized set of enforcement measures."  Article 13 of this Directive defines the procedure for quantifying these damages.

In the article the authors discuss the possible confusion created by the "undefined terms and interpretational differences" of the Directive and survey patent damage rules by country (including the United kingdom, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Italy).

Gregory J. Urbanchuk is with the Forensic & Dispute Services Practice of ESBA. He can be reached at gurbanchuk@esba.com. James R. Tumbridge is a barrister in the London office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP. He can be reached at jtumbridge@milbank.com.