Access to seized goods and data should be denied in preliminary proceedings if the seized material contains trade secrets and there is a serious chance that the patent will be held invalid. Case date: 01 February 2019 Case number: C/09/557229 / KG ZA 18-771 Court: Provisions Judge of the District Court of The Hague A full summary of…

Relevant prior art may prove not to be useful as a starting point for an attack on inventive step if the prior art teaching is negated by later studies before the effective date of the patent claims. In such a case, the skilled person would not have had an expectation of success. Case date:16 January…

In preliminary proceedings, the risk that a company will potentially suffer greatly as a result of the decision is a factor that has to be taken into account by the court. Case date: 28 December 2018 Case number: C/09/555970 / KG ZA 18-694 Court: Provisions Judge of the District Court of The Hague A full summary of this…

Even though subject to a confidentiality agreement an internal newsletter may be deemed publicly available if the addressees would not consider the newsletter to be covered by the confidentiality agreement. Case date: 21 November 2018 Case number: C/09/472888 / HA ZA 14-1019 Court: District Court of The Hague A full summary of this case has been published on…

The court solved the question of inventive step using the problem-solution approach, defining the objective technical problem without including a pointer to the solution of the problem. This, however, did not help the patentee, since the solution to the problem was already to be found in the common general knowledge and was used in similar…

The Court of Appeal of the Hague confirmed that a technical effect may only be cooroborated by post-filed data if it is sufficiently plausible from the description. Further, extension of the process (counter)claim at a late stage in the proceedings was not permitted as it conflicts with efficient case management. Case date:11 December 2018 Case…

For establishing inventive step it is not necessary that the prior art contains a pointer for combination, only that in the relevant prior art an incentive was present to combine the prior art. Case date: 27 November 2018 Case number: C/09/534649/HA ZA 17-651C/09/533643/HA ZA 17-599200.237.828/01 Court: Court of Appeal of The Hague A full summary of…

The Court confirmed that a District court, not specialised in patent matters, does have relative jurisdiction to decide a motion to produce exhibits for determining patent infringement. In order to positively decide a motion to produce exhibits, (threat of) infringement should be made plausible, but the threshold for plausibility is relatively low. Further, technical details…

The District Court of the Hague granted a provisional injunction against Sandoz’ generic darunavir product. As it was already offered in the G-standard, price erosion was an imminent danger for which a provisional injunction was warranted, and the SPC appeared to be valid having been held so in the parallell procedure before the UK court….