A recent Intellectual Property Enterprise Court Decision (IPEC) on 20 April 2022 has decided that ‘Muzmatch’, an online matchmaking service to the Muslim Community has infringed Match.com’s registered trade marks.
The decision by Nicholas Caddick Q.C was that Muzmatch’s use of signs and its name amounted to trade mark infringement and/or passing off of Match.com’s trade marks. This case follows successful oppositions by Match.com to Muzmatch’s registration of its marks in 2018, and unsuccessful attempts by Match.com to purchase Muzmatch between 2017 and 2019.
For many years, German courts would, in principle, only grant a preliminary injunction in a patent case, if the patent in suit had “gone through the fire” in the sense of having survived an adversarial opposition or nullity proceeding at first instance. This case law was based on the consideration that it can be extremely difficult for an infringement court to verify the validity of the patent in suit within a few days or even hours involving the risk of causing irreparable damage to the infringement defendant. Statistically, despite expert examination, only one in three granted patents withstands a challenge on validity. 
On March 24, 2022, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion in 
The Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA“) has published 
Powerful remedies, particularly General Exclusion Orders, are often cited as a reason why patent owners should consider asserting their patents at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 instead of, or in addition to, in U.S. District Court. A recent Federal Circuit decision reaffirms another advantage of asserting patents at the ITC: the potential for significant civil penalties (i.e., fines) assessed against an infringer who violates an ITC Consent Order. 
