Monday, September 25, 2017

Perotti on Torpedo Actions in Italy

As I have written before, a "torpedo action" is an action for a declaratory judgment filed by a potential patent infringement defendant in a European state that is believed to have a slow-moving docket, with the goal of preemptively staying proceedings in a faster forum in which the patent owner is likely to file an infringement action.  (For previous discussion, see my book pages 253-55 and, on this blog, posts here, here, here, here, and here.)  In my September 18, 2017 post, however, titled Some Recent Commentary on Unjustified Threats, Cross-Border Injunctions, Arrow Declarations, I forgot to include a recent blog post by Riccardo Perotti titled A requiem for torpedo actions? A catalogue of the most recent decisions on the issue, published on the IP Lens Blog (which until recently I was not aware of, but have now added to the list of "Other Blogs of Interest" in the left-hand column of this page).  Dr. Perrotti discusses, inter alia, recent Italian cases dismissing torpedo actions in Italy where the plaintiff seeks a declaration of noninfringement of the non-Italian portion of a European patent.  He concludes by stating that "all the torpedoes launched in Italy after the [2013] Asclepion ruling have been dismissed on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction. Does this mean that the torpedo saga has finally come to an end?"

No comments:

Post a Comment