Investigator:
Runhua Wang

Abstract:
A small number of courts in Europe and the United States have become central venues for resolving standard-essential patent (SEP) disputes, intensifying jurisdictional competition across transatlantic legal systems. This concentration of litigation has raised concerns about international comity, particularly where courts adopt anti-suit injunctions. Such concentration may signal forum selling, understood as the attraction of litigation through institutional features, procedural practices, or remedial approaches that make a forum especially appealing
to certain parties.

While scholars have identified forum selling in domestic systems in the United States and Germany, its application to international SEP disputes raises distinct questions. Unlike domestic forum selling, international jurisdictional competition occurs without hierarchical coordination or effective mechanisms to manage overlapping authority. At the same time, not all jurisdictional competition is necessarily problematic, as some courts attract SEP disputes through enhanced judicial expertise, which is typically categorized as consensual forum selling. This study focuses on SEP disputes in German, English, and U.S. courts, particularly disputes involving parallel litigation. By reviewing how these courts assert jurisdiction and manage overlapping proceedings, the study examines whether non-consensual forum selling exists in the international SEP context. It further explores responses to such competition that do not rely on new international treaties or conventions.