Dr Amandine Léonard presents on wrongful preliminary injunctions as part of Patent Network Spring Online Seminar Series

On Wednesday 24 February 2021, Dr Amandine Léonard presented her research on “Wrongful preliminary injunctions and the (in-)visible hand of EU procedure law in patent litigation?” during the first spring online seminar series of the Patent Scholars Network. 

The Patent Scholars Network was founded in 2019 by Dr Naomi Hawkins (Exeter), Dr Karen Walsh (Exeter) and Dr Aisling McMahon (Maynooth). The aim of the network is to create a forum for discussion and engagement between patent law scholars in the UK and Ireland.

The network established the virtual seminar series to provide a forum for fruitful and lively discussions of contemporary patent law developments in Europe and internationally.

The presentation by Dr Amandine Léonard analysed and explored the potential consequences of the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Bayer Pharma (C-688/17) on patent litigation and its ramification with national civil procedure. In the analysis of the case, the presentation focused on whether a regime of automatic liability for wrongful preliminary injunctions (PIs) in IP (and therefore patent) litigation would be per se incompatible with the EU IP Enforcement Directive. It also touched upon the relationship between an ‘unjustified PI’ and the practice of companies to launch products on the market ‘at risk’ before engaging in revocation action (ie. without clearing the way) and the meaning of abusive PIs compared to inherently risky enforcement of PIs. The second part of the presentation engaged with the larger role to be played by EU procedure law in patent litigation.

Dr Amandine Léonard is an Early Career Fellow in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Edinburgh Law School. Learn more about Amandine's research.