Second medical use cases have been making their way through patent courts around the world. In the Novartis / Sun litigation the Hague Court of Appeal (PI decision) and District Court (interlocutory merits decision) already provided their thoughts on indirect infringement in 2015. The Court of Appeal concluded that Sun did indirectly infringe Novartis’ patent,…
A new president of the European Patent Organisation, the person who will succeed the controversial president Benoît Battistelli in June 2018, will be chosen this autumn. That is the expectation of Martijn van Dam, Dutch secretary of state for Economic Affairs. Van Dam said this in a debate last week with parliament on the ‘deteriorating…
The SUEPO, the biggest trade union at the European Patent Organisation, filed a complaint against The Netherlands before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on 8 May 2017. According to the SUEPO, as host to one of the main offices of the European Patent Office, The Netherlands should have acted to end the breach…
In 2010 the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal took the badge of Swiss type claims from patentees (G 02/08), and since then they cannot use it anymore. Six years later two cases on (infringement of) Swiss type / second medical use claims are knockin’ on the Dutch Supreme Court’s door. While the Enlarged Board put…
The Netherlands has deposited its instrument of ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement with the Council of the EU. That has just been announced by the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs. The Netherlands is the eleventh member state of the Unitary Patent system to complete the ratification process. In order for the system to…
Therapeutic effect of a 2-10mg once yearly dosage regimen is made plausible by an example showing clinical effect of dosage regimens of 0.25, 0.50 and 1mg per three months, 2.0 mg every six months and 4.0 mg once a year. For the purpose of the problem-solution approach, two documents describing a treatment of diseases which…
The Senate or ‘Eerste Kamer’ of the Parliament in the Netherlands approved the Unified Patent Agreement on 28 June 2016 without discussion. Two weeks ago, the Dutch Second Chamber, ‘Tweede Kamer’, had already ratified the UPCA. It isn’t clear when the Netherlands will complete the formal procedure by depositing its instrument of ratification with the General…
Claim construction and scope of protection are perhaps the most hotly contested topics in Dutch patent law. Over the last ten years, we have had no less than six Supreme Court decisions dealing with these matters. The latest development in this continuing saga is the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bayer / Sandoz, which offers…
Increasing the (grounds of the) claim at a late stage of the proceedings in accelerated patent proceedings is contrary to due process of law. The claimed printer cartridge is not novel since no structural (technical) features distinguish the patent from the prior art. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP…
The Dutch part of EP 119 – allegedly essential to the UMTS standard – was found to be obvious over the latest draft of the UMTS standard pre-priority date read in conjunction with a document of a UMTS Working Group proposing changes thereto. The skilled person would read these together and so be confronted with…
