Why Apple Went To Dusseldorf

'Embarrassing revelation' indeed. How in the world is it possible that a German court can impose a EU-wide ban in a trial that contained what is basically fabricated evidence? How did this slip past Samsung's lawyers ( I remember this whole thing blowing up at the hands of the tech media, no? ) Didn't the court do its own, independent, impartial research into the matter? Why didn't the court compare some physical devices as opposed to basing a decision with such far-reaching consequences on some printed pictures?! Can somebody who has studied the law explain to me the benefit of allowing plaintiffs to have command over which court they want to litigate in? It feels self-defeating.

After reading this I'm also surprised how the author of this article can possibly assess that, "there’s also Dusseldorf, Germany, where judges are proving themselves quick [and] competent" after this incident that demonstrate just how patently (!) incompetent they really are. But I guess this is just testimony to the fact that actual evidence and reason are tertiary in a justice system that can be defeated by cherry-picking courts that are friendly to whatever the litigator's cause. How can the public trust in a judiciary framework that functions with this total lack of precision and attention to detail.

On a different note, and I'm sure nobody really cares but since Düsseldorf is my hometown I'd like to point out that it is spelled with an umlaut. If for some reason you can't do that, how about spelling it Duesseldorf :) That's how it's done in German if you can't use the umlaut for any reason (url's etc.). Is it common to just leave out diacritics when dealing with foreign vocabulary in the english language ?

As a german I am ashamed that a german court will be abused for litigation as a means to compete, costing me both in taxes and in the higher price I have to pay for products in the end. And people wonder why the economy is stagnating in the western countries. All our money goes to taxes and lawyers.

  Now there’s also Dusseldorf, Germany, where judges are proving
  themselves quick, competent, and more often than not, erring on
  the side of the patent holder.

My employer has recently also been sued by an American company in the Dusseldorf court for an alleged patent violation, so I can confirm the part of "erring on the side of the patent holder" from personal experience.

In this case, the dispute was over the production of a chemical substance and the other party alleged that this stuff simply cannot be produced without violating their patent. Our company's lawyers and chemists presented a huge mountain of experimental data and analysis stating a number of alternative ways to produce the stuff, including the method currently used by our plants in Asia. The court then took this information and asked the plaintiff "does this look reasonable to you?" to which they of course answered back "no way!" and hence essentially won the case. Their final verdict was basically an exact copy of the plaintiff's statements.

So I don't know about the part of being competent, but this court is basically issuing default judgements on the behalf of patent holders. Being there personally for some of the hearings, I also got the impression that certain lawyers are very well connected to this court, causing them to just wave certain cases through without too much consideration.

Our case ended with an out-of-court settlement and I subsequently lost track of the final outcome but it sure was an eye-opening experience for me just watching how it's done.

> Patent-holding plaintiffs won 63% of all infringement cases in Dusseldorf between 2006 and 2009, according to recent research by the Global IP Project, a series of studies initiated by the law firm Finnegan. That’s well above the global average of 35%

I'm surprised the global average is so low. I'd expect plaintiffs to win a significant majority of cases for the simple reason that plaintiffs are the ones that decide whether or not to sue.