As reported by Christopher GILB in the Luzerner Zeitung today, there is some litigation going on at the FPC about entitlement to a European patent pertaining to a washing agent that is free from palm oil.
It appears that Werner & Mertz (well known e.g. for its brands Erdal® and Frosch®) has sued the Swiss start-up company Good Soaps for lack of entitlement to the patent, i.e. unlawful usurpation thereof.
The patent has not been identified in the news. I could not leave it at that and did my homework. The patent application at stake is EP 2 592 134 »; the currently registered applicant is Compad Consulting GmbH. See the European Patent Register for further information. The file wrapper is telling: The complaint of 9 January 2019, the reply of 20 September 2019 (including all appendices) as well as the comments on the rejoinder of 5 December 2019 are available online. The instruction hearing took place on 8 July 2019 — without a settlement being reached.
The main hearing is said to be scheduled for 16 September 2020. I trust this will get interesting …
The official announcement of the main hearing has just been published by the FPC. No surprises anymore, it’s indeed all about EP 2 592 134 ».
Reported by Martin WILMING
Header image courtesy of T. K. Naliaka, under CC BY-SA 4.0
—
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Case No. O2019_001
Werner & Mertz
./.
Compad Consulting GmbH
Panel of Judges:
-
- Dr. Mark SCHWEIZER
- Dr. Tobias BREMI
- Dr. Frank SCHAGER
Judge-rapporteur:
-
- Dr. Tobias BREMI
Court Clerk:
-
- Susanne ANDERHALDEN
Representative(s) of Plaintiff:
Representative(s) of Defendant / Counterclaimant:
-
- Dr. Andri HESS (Homburger)
—
PATENT APPLICATION IN SUIT
Clean version of the DREX, i.e. the version for which the EPO indicated its intention to grant a patent:
—
BE ON THE KNOW
One Reply to “Compad Consulting and Werner & Mertz litigating over entitlement to a patent”