Upon reading the title of this blog entry, readers may be wondering what the “ex re ipsa” doctrine involves. It therefore may be worth clarifying that it is a legal doctrine applied, for example, to cases dealing with damages, where the damage is presumed to have been caused (“causality”) when it is inherent to the…
On 13 April 2018, the Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 15) wrote a decision highly illustrative of the challenges that an “added matter” objection may raise in Spain, particularly in the context of preliminary injunction proceedings. The decision confirmed a ruling of 18 July 2017 from Barcelona Commercial Court number 4, which had lifted a…
Historically, the Spanish Patents and Trademarks Office (“SPTO”) has rejected the correction of the registered term of supplementary protection certificates (“SPCs”), even in cases where such term has had to be recalculated due to the new case law emanating from the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”). As reported in our posts of…
In July 2017, the Patents Court of Barcelona handed down a decision finding that “Swiss-type” claims were affected by the Reservation made by Spain when it ratified the European Patent Convention (“EPC”), whereby European patents, insofar as they confer protection on chemical or pharmaceutical products “as such“, shall be ineffective in Spain. In particular, the…
As most readers will know, yesterday the European Commission published a proposal to amend Regulation 469/2009 concerning the supplementary protection certificate for medicinal products (the “SPC Regulation”) aimed at introducing a so-called “manufacturing exemption for export purposes” (in short, a “manufacturing waiver”). The rationale behind it is that the introduction of this new exemption to…
The Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 15) recently handed down an interesting judgment (dated 6 February 2018) revoking a utility model and ordering the owner to pay the damages caused by having enforced it while knowing that it lacked novelty. According to Article 114 of the former Spanish Patent Act (equivalent to Article 104 of…
The new Spanish Patent Act, which came into force on 1 April 2017, introduced numerous improvements aimed at modernising an old and archaic patent system that needed a total reform. One of the aspects introduced by the new Act is the possibility of limiting the patent before the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office, after it…
In one of the saga of cases that involved Societé des Produits Nestlé and companies that are trying to market capsules compatible with Nescafé’s Dolce Gusto system, the defendant alleged, among other arguments, that some of the patents asserted were null due to a lack of inventive step. The case was handled by Commercial Court…
As discussed in previous blogs, four years ago (yes, it has already been four years, tempus fugit) the Barcelona Commercial Court Judges who hear patent cases published a Protocol aimed at providing a quick and efficient service to participants of the Mobile World Congress (“MWC”) that takes place every year in Barcelona. The clarity provided…
As published in previous blogs, on 1 April 2017 a new Patents Act came into force in Spain which has modernized Spanish patent law. For example, the new Law got rid of “non-examined” patents. As a result, since 1 April 2017 all patents are examined, which has aligned the examination procedure with the standards of…
