German Federal Patent Court's 2013 annual report - with English language case law summary

A fun read - for some...

This Kat is a bit of fan of the German Federal Patent Court's annual report ... last but not least due to the fact that it always includes an excellent English language summary - and the 2013 report is no exception.  The 2013 edition of the report is now available in PDF format and can be downloaded here.

The goods news is that the "... current state of business of the Federal Patent Court remains positive. The number of proceedings terminated has increased in comparison to the previous year. Thanks to the efforts of the entire staff, we have seen a 20% increase in proceedings terminated over new proceedings. The backlog of unresolved proceedings, especially opposition proceedings, has been significantly reduced."

The report's foreword also gives a helpful summary of its content. There is something for everyone - from trade mark geek to patent enthusiast:

"As usual, the first section offers a compendium of rulings by the Boards of the Federal Patent Court on patent law, utility model law and design law as well as trade mark law. The highly abridged review of the decisions provides information on the most important trends brought about by the rulings by the court. If your interest is piqued, the full text of the rulings and judgments is available on our website under “Entscheidungen” [Decisions]. The second section contains the Business Report which includes a statistical overview of the business aspects of the Court as well as information on personnel, electronic legal transactions and another topics of importance."

Enjoy!