In commerce the universality of English as a language and the reputation of the common law system of law has led to the de facto reality that the global legal system for civil litigation is either litigation in the US Federal Courts or litigation in the Royal Courts of Justice in London. No other two legal systems have anything like their global strength and reach with skilled pools of trial attorneys/barristers and experts to call upon, Both systems have highly regarded judges whose judgements are cogent, clear and unbiased. The US and UK systems of appeals leading up to their respective Supreme Courts are highly regarded and trusted.
But there are significant differences in procedure between the two jurisdictions. These differences are of particular importance in patent infringement litigation and are especially important when the Plaintiff has both a granted US patent and a granted UK patent for the same invention. This Briefing Note aims to outline their main differences so that a Third Party Litigation Funder can understand why a synergy of UK and US patent infringement proceedings can lead to early wins and settlement of what might otherwise become protracted global litigation where the only beneficiaries are the lawyers and not the patent owner and his third party litigation funder.
Each year between 5,000 and 6,000 patent infringement cases are filed in the United States. There are no easily available figures for the number of UK patent infringement cases filed at the Royal Courts of Justice or at the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) which is the UK court reserved for cases where less than £500,000 in damages is claimed. Reasonably reliable anecdotal evidence from discussions at the UK Patent Bar suggests that currently less than 50 patent infringement cases are filed each year at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. The reason for this low number arises not from the quality or expertise of the lawyers, experts and judges that can decide patent infringement cases - it arises because the UK litigation system contains a number of procedural constraints which ensure that patent infringement cases only arrive before the specialist patent judges in the Patent Court of the Royal Courts of Justice after they have been through a very effective filtering process that eliminates bad claims and pushes all parties towards enforceable settlements.