Incompletely served preliminary injunction must be revoked

As a lawyer in the field of IT, competition law, copyright law, cease-and-desist letters and preliminary injunctions are actually commonplace, and yet you still come across case constellations that are exciting and new.

This is also the case with this decision of the Kammergericht (the Higher Regional Court in Berlin). The material background is of no interest at all. The civil procedural sequence is exciting.

The Berlin Regional Court had issued a temporary injunction in the matter. Now the question arose whether this was properly executed within one month according to § 929 II. This must regularly be done in party proceedings, i.e. by the requesting attorney vis-à-vis the defendant. Unfortunately, the certified copy that the defendant’s bailiff ultimately served was incomplete because the second page of the order was inadvertently interchanged with another page. The district court vacated the order because of the now missing service, upon objection by the defendant. The Kammergericht felt this decision was so correct that it even dismissed the appeal without an oral hearing.

An exciting stumbling block for attorneys and another item on a long checklist to consider if you do find yourself confronted with an injunction in intellectual property law.