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International Intellectual Property

Research guide with links to laws, treaties, cases and information on International IP

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This "Cases" tab lists web portals useful for finding international IP case law.

This task is generally more difficult than searching in a simpler domestic system due the overlap in international IP authorities, stratification of court system processes and choices of jurisdiction for litigants. The different user interfaces and indexing systems of the foreign sites also add to the learning curve.

Recommended additional sources:

The International / Comparative Patent Law guide from Mitchell | Hamline School of Law.

The judicial sites of the individual countries and supranational authorities involved.

Westlaw

Westlaw

  • European Patent Office Reports
    "Full-text decisions of the European Patent Office and its boards of appeal, including cross-references to rules of the European Patent Convention, as reported in European Patent Office Reports. Coverage begins with 1979."
  • European Union Cases: European Trade Mark Reports
    "Full-text trademark decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Communities, the Court of First Instance of the European Communities, designated trademark courts, and domestic courts, as well as trademark applications submitted to and decisions of the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Opposition Division and boards of appeal). Coverage begins with 1996."
  • United Kingdom Cases: Intellectual Property
    "Combination database containing U.K. and European decisions from Sweet & Maxwell's Entertainment and Media Law Reports, European Trade Mark Reports, Fleet Street Reports, Reports of Patent Cases, and European Patent Office Reports. Coverage begins with 1966."
  • Intellectual Property Cases Appeal Facta
    "Coverage includes facta extracted from the court files of significant court cases in every Canadian Common Law jurisdiction." Canadian IP Appeals and Motion material is also available.

EU

EUR-Lex


The EUR-Lex case law pages do not provide IP specific coverage, though many filters can be applied via the advanced search page.

Coverage includes: Judgments and Orders for;
  • cases brought by EU institutions, Member States, corporate bodies or individuals against an EU institution or the European Central Bank

  • national courts' requests for preliminary rulings concerning the validity or interpretation of EU law

IP is apparently at least partially classified under External Policy > Commercial Policy in their Directory.

Domain Name Disputes

ICANN

ICANN no longer maintains a case decision archive for UDRP decisions. Instead, searches have to be made at each one of the five authorized dispute resolution service providers listed here.

WIPO is one of those providers. The UDRP decisions for the others can be reached from the links on the ICANN page referenced above.

WIPO

WIPO Cases and WIPO Panel Decisions, Search Page, includes links to an overview and other domain name materials.

The parent Domain Name Dispute Resolution page for that section provides a larger set of links.

WIPO's Country Profiles Directory lists the number of domain name disputes from that country by year as a statistic. The statistics total figures are not linked to individual decisions or reports.

EPO

European Patent Office


The boards of appeal decisions database search engine provides "comprehensive texts of each decision of the EPO boards of appeal ... since 1979. The decisions are available in the language of the proceedings...".

Also curated there are journal supplements for periodic compilations of case Law from the Contracting States to the EPC, "...summaries of interesting decisions handed down by the courts of the EPO member states, ...providing a valuable overview of European national case law on substantive patent law..."

These two sources and several others can be reached from the EPO's Law & Practice page.

Lexis

Lexis.com


Lexis.com coverage lets you search foreign court cases. There are two ways to do this.

  • The better method is to search by country in Foreign Laws & Legal Sources. That database is reached from the LexisAdvance Research Home Page > Research: "v" > Lexis.com > Find Laws by Country or Region > Foreign Laws and Legal Resources.
  • The second method is via Lexis.com (see steps above) > Area of Law - by Topic / International Law > Find Cases. Neither of the two methods limits returns to IP cases, which you'd accomplish using search terms.
  • Finally, by adding "International Law" and "International Trade" as Subtabs, you can search for WTO and domain name decisions.

Lexis Advance


EU OHIM

The EU's Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) Law search page for Trademarks and Designs sets out internal procedures, foundational texts, and other legal related TM and designs information.

In particular, the Preliminary Rulings and Invalidity Decisions links on that page contain application rulings and information.

The page also links to the eSearch Case Law page, where OHIM, General Court, Court of Justice, and national applications on trademarks and designs can be searched. Rulings are presumably included as well.

EU Bloomberg Law

Bloomberg Law

Bloomberg's European Union IP Resources, let you search ECJ and EU General Court case law. The interface and search options for this subject, however, are not as robust as those of Lexis or Westlaw.

WTO

 

The World Trade Organization's Analytical Index "... contains extracts of key pronouncements and findings from tens of thousands of pages of WTO jurisprudence, including panel reports, Appellate Body reports, arbitral decisions and awards, and decisions of WTO committees, councils and other WTO bodies."

This material, given the nature of the WTO and TRIPS, concerns country-to-country disputes. Apparently no easy method of filtering for arbitral awards is provided. 

 

Germany

 

Recent decisions of the German Patent court, in German. The last three years of decisions are posted.