On 17 February 2022, the Administrative Chamber of the Spanish Supreme Court handed down a very interesting judgment setting out legal doctrine on the legal value of expert opinions from the Administration in two different scenarios: on the one hand, when they are issued in judicial proceedings between third parties and, on the other, when…

To date, final decisions from the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (“SPTO”) dealing with matters such as patents or supplementary protection certificates (“SPC”) may be appealed before the administrative law chamber of what are known as the Tribunales Superiores de Justicia (“High Courts of Justice”). Although these Courts are highly specialised in public law matters,…

As readers will be well aware, one of the points on which the courts of various European countries diverge, is whether or not the prosecution history of the patent at hand may be taken into account to interpret its scope of protection. For example, the UK Supreme Court, in its landmark judgment of 12 July…

Readers who have followed our last two blog entries and the vast number of comments received, will have seen the following two conclusions surfacing. First, although the UPC ‘s Protocol on Provisional Application, in reality, may not be in force, there is nothing to worry about because there are no police around. Second, there is…

Our last blog entry, UPC: four reasons on why the PPA is not legally in force, published on 21 April 2022, seems to have touched a nerve, as attested by the unprecedented number of comments received, for which this author is very grateful. Some comments were supportive, while others expressed disagreement. In this blog, we…

Having been teaching Public International Law since 1990 and being a tenured professor of this field of law, this author has some difficulty in understanding the state of collective nirvana that the UPC Preparatory Committee has instilled amidst the UPC community, by causing them to believe that the “Protocol to the Agreement on a UPC…

On 27 January 2022, the Spanish Supreme Court handed down a very interesting judgment dealing with a dispute surrounding the ownership of a patent application that claims a system to produce domestic hot and cold water. Judgments dealing with patent ownership are very scarce in Spain. Hence the interest of this case, the background to…

According to article 1 of the European Patent Convention (EPC), “a system of law, common to Contracting States for the grant of patents for inventions is established by this Convention.” So, at first glance, it would appear that the European Patent Organisation was meant to be an International Institution governed by the rule of law….