The Status Quo injunction is not a variation on Wayne’s World classic “No Stairway, Denied” joke. While some may yearn for a ban on their generic tunes, Status Quo is still not denied. That is not the faith of all generics, as Teva found out in Dutch litigation over its generic version of Grünenthal’s Nebido:…
Everything flows, and the Dutch cross-border injunction flows like no other. From its source in the The Hague all the way to the cradle of Europe: Greece. So decided the Dutch Courts in the Novartis vs. Pharmathen case. The willingness of the Dutch Courts to assume jurisdiction to grant cross-border relief in international patent cases…
The interplay between EPO and national proceedings may take various forms. The Technical Board of Appeal revoking a European Patent during European-wide litigation is one of the more dramatic examples. The EPO’s stay of the grant of an application following an entitlement claim (an ‘entitlement torpedo’) another one. And then there is the central limitation…
What is it with the Dutch and money? How much truth is there in the cliché that the Dutch are cheap? Do we really get back to business after a romantic diner and split the bill to the cent? Where does this ‘going Dutch’ come from? That term, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, connects…
Yesterday, the Dutch prime minister announced the Netherlands will be ‘locked down’ until mid-January. At the same time the author of this blog, part of a six member audience due to COVID restrictions, paid his last visit to the movies for many weeks to come. On the screen Tenet, a mishmash of Sci-Fi wannabe and…
In his (or her) younger years at school, a once to be Dutch patent litigator was learned that the Netherlands share a borders with Germany and Belgium. On the geography maps, they seemed to be set in stone. History class already provided a different perspective: now friendly neighbours would once surprise each other with unannounced…
While the numerous recent court decisions may suggest so, the ‘F’ in FRAND does not stand for ‘Fashionable’. The reader of this blog, well-informed in patent matters, will know by heart what this acronym spells out. He (or, I say once and for all, she)1 will also know that, next to technical intricacies of assessing…
Pemetrexed, yet again: last Wednesday the District Court of The Hague, swimming against the current and after a deep dive in the prosecution file, decided that Fresenius did not infringe Eli Lilly’s ‘pemetrexed disodium’ patent with a generic product that does not contain pemetrexed disodium, not even by equivalence. The basic facts of the widespread…
… that is the question in recent ‘Dutch discovery’ proceedings in a patent dispute between beer giants Anheuser-Busch Inbev (‘ABI’) and Heineken. Well, sort of: the legal question was if ABI would be granted access to documentation seized at Heineken’s premises in the Netherlands. The Hague Court’s Preliminary Measures Judge’s answer did all but refresh…
In a recent decision The Hague Court of Appeal mixes a cocktail of SPC case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The ingredients: 1/3 Sanofi, 1/3 Boehringer and 1/3 Gilead and a sniff of Georgetown. Shake well with the skilled person’s common general knowledge and the basic patent’s description (warning: do…
