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Court of Appeal hearing in parallel imports litigation

United Kingdom
04/02/2004
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The Court of Appeal heard four days of argument in January 2004 in the long running case of Boehringer Ingelheim & others -v- Swingward & others, in which both the pharmaceutical companies and the parallel importers appealed against the judgment of Mr Justice Laddie dated 6 February 2003. In that judgment, on his review of the case after its return from the European Court of Justice, Mr Justice Laddie had found for the pharmaceutical companies on most issues, particularly in relation to tight restrictions placed on parallel importers when reboxing branded product.

For details of the February 2003 Judgment and also a separate judgment given in July 2003 by Mr Justice Laddie relating to further packaging designs, please refer to our previous Law-Now articles dated 6 February and 10 September 2003. The July hearing is due to resume later this year and was not considered in detail by the Court of Appeal.

A judgment from the Court of Appeal is expected within the next few weeks. However, this case may continue yet further, given that the Court of Appeal judges discussed openly during the hearing the possible need for a second reference to the European Court of Justice.

We shall report on the Court of Appeal judgment as soon as it becomes available.

For further information, please contact Stephen Whybrow on telephone +44 (0)207 367 2175 or at [email protected] , or Lucy Kilshaw on telephone +44 (0)207 367 2044 or at [email protected]

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