In June 2018, the Appeal Court of Ireland refused to grant a preliminary injunction and held that preliminary injunctions may not be granted when damages are an adequate remedy for the plaintiff and when the defendant is likely to suffer the greater irreparable damage if the preliminary injunction is granted.

The dispute concerns the questions whether the seizure of goods in transit as border measures for enforcement of intellectual property rights is compatible with the TRIPS Agreement and GATT rules on freedom of transit, among others.  Although a request for consultation was made by two complainants, the dispute was amicably resolved between the parties.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed that patents are unenforceable in case of inequitable conduct before the patent office.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit addressed the issue of inequitable conduct during patent prosecution. Upon affirming the majority of a district court’s findings of inequitable conduct, it remanded the case for a determination of whether the incidents of inequitable conduct justified the sanction of rendering the patent unenforceable.

The Supreme Court in this case decided that patent holders do not have an automatic right to a permanent injunction in case of patent infringement. Instead, the decision whether or not to grant an injunction or an alternative remedy has to be decided on a case-by-case basis taking into account a traditional four-factor test.

The Kenyan High Court found that certain provisions of the Kenyan 2008 Anti-Counterfeit Act violate the right to life, human dignity and health as guaranteed under the Kenyan Constitution. The Court obliged the Kenyan Government to reconsider a provision of the Act to remedy the situation.

The Canadian Federal Court granted a limited injunction that prevented the defendant from any further marketing activity for an infringing product but allowed the selling of the same infringing product to patients in the absence of an alternative supplier. The decision is important for the treatment of patent holders that do not use their invention (“non-practicing entities”).