Russia and the USA came first and second in IPKat’s recent poll asking readers to nominate the country in which they would least like to litigate an IP case. (China came third.)
The IPKat’s poll is a great idea and will no doubt generate lots of interesting discusison. There are many layers of complexity to the question and it would be interesting to dissect the data a little more. For example, IP owners like some countries more than others, and IP challengers, unsurprisingly like the reverse. The type of IP right to be litigated is probably also a big factor.
Case in point being Australia – in an upcoming article, I will take the example of patents and provide a list of reasons why Australia is a difficult place to challenge patent rights. This is why there are relatively few generic pharmaceutical patent challenges in Australia. (A taste of some of these points will appear in my article in this month’s IAM Magazine.)