Dorsey & Whitney organized an online seminar on March 18^th, 2021, in which Dr. Petra Westphal, Mr. Felix Einsel, Mr. Fei Zhao of Sonderhoff & Einsel spoke on the topic of “Challenging patents and patent applications in China, Japan and Europe/Germany.”

The practice of enforcing patents has recently been an area of continuous change in many industrial nations. This naturally means a change of strategy in defending against infringement lawsuits for the potential infringer. China and Germany are two countries which by far have the highest number of patent infringement cases in the Asian and European continent. On the other hand, Japan being an island country, enjoys a reputation of being tough on patent owners, leading to only a 100+ infringement cases annually.

The seminar focused on the defensive side on how to protect oneself against patent infringement claims, discussing possible judicial and administrative proceedings such as third party observations, oppositions, invalidation trials and defenses for invalidation in China, Germany and Japan. Not only were the different systems and the practice of law introduced, but also the cultural peculiarities of each jurisdiction, including the dos and don’ts of defending against infringement lawsuits in the three countries.