Wednesday 19 October 2011

The cost of proving infringement: how do civil procedure rules and disclosure affect it?

A postgraduate student writes as follows:
I am writing to ask for a little assistance for my thesis in Business Law at Copenhagen Business School.

The subject of my thesis is "Protection of Process Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry". The thesis examines the strategies of patents and secrecy for process innovation and the costs that influence the strategy. One of the costs I examine is the cost of proving an infringement by comparing the civil procedure rules in Denmark and UK. Therefore I am examining UK Civil Procedure Rules and the rules of disclosure in regard to the protection of patents and business secrets. Unfortunately I am having a hard time finding literature to this subject at my university.

I therefore kindly ask if you can be of any assistance to recommending literature on this subject or if you could to post my request for this information on your weblog".
Offhand I can't think of any literature or useful guidance on the cost dimension to the Civil Procedure Rules and the operation of the rules of disclosure. Can any reader recommend anything? Alternatively, might there be anyone out there who would at least be prepared to talk to the student in question and give her the benefit of their insights and experience?

1 comment:

Norman said...

I'm afraid I don't have directly useful information, but the student might be interested in a Canadian case concerning lovastatin as an example of the enforcement problems. The defendant's Chinese supplier substituted an infringing process for the more expensive non-infringing process the defendant had specified. At trial, DNA evidence was used to establish which process was used. See my overview: http://www.sufficientdescription.com/2011/02/lovastatin-background.html