Litigation
Pragmatic, commercial solutions
Determined, tenacious, observant and committed; our Dispute Resolution team has years of experience. The Disputes team includes litigation lawyers and patent and trade mark attorney litigators and prosecutors. It offers clients a fully integrated approach that is unique within the UK intellectual property services market. Efficiency, with a holistic, high-quality approach to dispute management and resolution is the objective.
Representing clients at all levels of the EPO, we are also expert in conducting enforcement and revocation litigation before the UK courts and IP offices, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and in matters that cross European borders and have international components.
Our Disputes team works closely with all of our technical specialists so that disputes are spotted early and, if possible, avoided by way of pragmatic, commercial solutions. Where that is not possible or desirable, cases are prepared early and efficiently. If litigation becomes a reality, the Carpmaels & Ransford team will be fully informed and ahead of the opposition.
“A Rolls-Royce firm with incredibly knowledgeable people and UPC litigation experience.”
Chambers UK, 2025
This combination of technical and strategic expertise makes us a team that you want on your side. We will be knowledgeable about your case and your business. We will be prepared. We will work as a team. Whatever the task, whether it is to litigate or to achieve a commercial result, we will succeed.
In recent years, our UK litigation team has grown significantly to meet client demand for the firm’s contentious services. We have recently expanded our presence in Germany, and our litigation team includes German, French and Dutch litigators, meaning we are well placed to handle disputes across Europe.
We can also draw on long established relationships with the best IP firms and advisors in other European and global jurisdictions to provide seamless support worldwide.
“The Carpmaels team has strong industry knowledge and does a great job integrating litigators with the patent attorney team.”
The Legal 500, 2025
The four pillars of our Dispute Resolution team’s work are:
UK Litigation
Our team is expert in enforcement and revocation litigation before the UK courts and UKIP offices. We have handled cases before the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, Patents Court and the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC). Over the past 5 years, the team has been involved in over 40 UK litigations covering a range of technical subject matter, but we have particular experience in the healthcare sector, where we represent some of the world’s leading life sciences and MedTech innovators.
EPO Oppositions
Alongside our UK and co-ordination work, our disputes team works closely with Carpmaels & Ransford attorneys on oppositions at the European Patent Office. Our EPO opposition practice is one of the very best in Europe and covers all fields of technology, from blockbuster pharmaceuticals to memory devices, polymers to digital broadcast systems, detergents to medical devices. Our integrated team of patent attorneys and litigators work collaboratively to ensure efficiency and continuity for our clients.
For more information about our EPO oppositions work, please see here.
European & Global Co-ordination
Very few of our clients’ projects involve a single jurisdiction; they are much more likely to cross European and international borders. Our integrated team of litigators and patent attorneys based in London and Munich control, co-ordinate and manage IP projects active across Europe. For matters in other jurisdictions, we team with local counsel in the preparation of strategies, arguments and evidence for court and IP office proceedings. Our integrated offering means we can use the same team to coordinate national actions across Europe, while also handling parallel disputes in the EPO, UPC and UK courts.
Unified Patent Court
Carpmaels has been representing its clients before the UPC from day one. We have handled some of the most high-profile, technically complex and valuable cases at the UPC, including successfully leading the first ever revocation action at the Central Division, and the first ever UPC case involving an SPC.
More than 50 Carpmaels attorneys are deeply involved in active UPC litigation and many more in UPC related advice: we have more than 80 qualified UPC representatives and over 30 litigators with experience of national and UPC litigation.
We are one of the few firms that can use the same team to handle parallel disputes in the EPO, UPC and UK courts, while also coordinating national actions across Europe. Although a new court, the UPC is an amalgamation of the laws and procedural practices of the main European patent-litigating countries, most notably those of the UK (whose lawyers contributed to the development of the court and its rules), Germany, and France. While its legal judges come from many backgrounds, the UPC technical judges are typically European patent attorneys who approach patentability with a strong EPO flavour. This means that our European patent attorneys have been able to leverage their extensive EPO oral and written advocacy experience at the UPC. English has become the dominant language of proceedings at the UPC, and our teams have been able to present seamlessly in a wide range of UPC settings.
Our litigation team includes UK, German, French and Dutch litigators, making us able to staff UPC matters with creative, diverse teams. Our teams are currently leading cases in the Munich, Düsseldorf and Paris Local Divisions and in the Munich and Milan branches of the Central Division, as well as at the Court of Appeal.
We are currently representing clients in more than 20 UPC actions, including preliminary injunction proceedings, and infringement and revocation actions, and we have also acted in 9 appeals to date, including ongoing appeals of first instance infringement and revocation decisions. Carpmaels is especially active in the healthcare sector, acting in more than 25% of all UPC actions concerning therapeutics – including a third of all actions relating to biologics – as well as multiple disputes in the diagnostics and medical devices spaces.
For more information about our UPC offering, please see here.
