Our client is one of the world’s largest chemical manufacturers. It holds a large number of patents for a range of chemical compounds, including around 200 patents for agrochemical compounds. Although the issues in this example relate to the agrochemical sector, the problems faced also occur in other sectors.
Our client discovered that a number of Chinese chemical manufacturers were planning to offer, at the world’s largest agrochemical conference (the Crop Science and Technology Conference), infringing chemicals for sale in the UK. Our client’s objectives were:
i. to prevent the Chinese companies from advertising and selling infringing products at the conference; and
ii. to ensure that maximum publicity was obtained in order to discourage others from infringing its patents.
The most important issue was to act quickly once the conference had begun, since it lasted only 3 days and injunctions would clearly be of little value if only obtained after the conference had ended. However, the injunctions could not be obtained prior to the conference, as our client had only a suspicion that infringing products would be offered – it would be necessary to attend the conference and gather evidence as what the companies were actually advertising in order to persuade the court to grant the injunctions.
We therefore ensured that all other aspects of the preparation were put in place well before the conference started. By reviewing the conference attendees’ websites, we could look at the range of chemicals offered worldwide, and therefore identify which companies were likely to infringe, and which patents were likely to be infringed. All the evidence relating to the particular patents in issue, and the likely damage that would be suffered by our client if the infringements took place, was also put in place.
At the conference itself, acting in conjunction with a Scottish law firm (proceedings were subject to Scottish law owing to the location of the conference), we successfully obtained injunctions against 19 different companies which were offering one or more of four different patented agrochemical compounds for sale. The injunctions required the companies to stop offering the relevant products and remove all references to the products from their brochures. Two of the companies refused to comply and were ejected from the conference by the conference organiser.