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At-a-glance: Danish Patent & Trademark Office Helgeshøj Allé 81, 2630 Taastrup, Denmark Tel: +45 4350 8000 Fax: +45 4350 8001 Email: pvs@dkpto.dk Website: www.dkpto.dk The legal market in Denmark is stable and there hasn't been much movement... [more]

The legal market in Denmark is stable and there hasn't been much movement in the past 12 months. The country wasn't affected too much by the financial crisis; nevertheless, a number of trends have slowly surfaced. Firstly, there has been a general decrease in IP work, much of which is moving in-house. "IP is quite a specialist area and in these times there isn't too much work for legal in-house patent departments. So, they claim it back from external counsel," one partner says. Also, clients have become more price-conscious.

Most litigation in Europe is carried out in the UK or Germany, but in this small jurisdiction, there is healthy trade mark activity. For example, a widely publicised case involving Tivoli, a Danish superbrand, and Montana, a well known Danish manufacturer of furniture, was appealed to the Supreme Court. In patent litigation, pharmaceutical disputes dominate the preliminary injunction phase of cases. "Infringement and validity is more mixed," one practitioner says. "Then the scope is wider including telecoms, pharmaceuticals and mechanics."

The level of Danish filing is very low but there are exceptions to the rule. "Some industries like fishing are overrepresented," says one partner. "The Danish patent covers Greenland and the Faroe Islands but one would need a special reason to file a Danish application."

In the face of dwindling national applications, the modernised Danish Patent and Trade mark Office has been proactive in establishing patent prosecution highways (PPH). Most recently, it has continued and expanded its PPH pilot programme with the Israeli Patent Office. Also, effective from January 1 2013, the local patent office launched a PPH and a PCT-PPH programme with the Chinese Patent Office. "We're the most active jurisdiction in the world for making bilateral agreements to speed up prosecution," one partner says. "The [patent] office has had its antenna out for some time and sees that filing has gone down. So, it's done this." Some national patent offices see the EPO as a competitor, however, the Danish Patent Office has realised that it cannot be a major filing office and has restructured so that it has "transferred from a filing office to a service provider".