President Benoît Battistelli of the European Patent Office (EPO), criticized for his harsh leadership, has survived the meeting of the supervisory Administrative Council (AC), but he has been put under high pressure to end the social unrest at the organization. During the meeting of the AC (the supervisory organ of the EPO with representatives of the…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed an appeal of a district court’s motions to compel arbitration and stay proceedings (Let’s Go Aero, Inc. v. Cequent Performance Products, Inc., March 3, 2016, Taranto, R.). A ruling on arbitrability would be advisory as to the district court’s order. A full summary of this…

The Bulgarian Patent Office refused to issue a patent for an invention claimed as a medical use because the subject matter constituted a method for treatment of the human body and therefore it was unpatentable under Art. 7(2) of the Bulgarian Patents and Utility Models Registration Act (“PUMRA”).  The decision of the Patent Office was…

Factual findings did not support a district court’s conclusion that a former analyst for two financial services companies intended to cause a loss of $12 million when he unlawfully copied proprietary computer files and used the data to conduct computerized stock market trades for himself. A 36-month prison sentence based on the erroneous intended loss…

Two draft bills implementing the UPCA in the German legal system have recently been proposed by the German Ministry of Justice (BMJV) and shall be considered in the following. The first is the ratification law itself consisting of only three articles. The second one is a relatively complex draft bill mainly amending the German Act…

There has been some confusion in Germany as to whether exhibiting products and services on a trade show qualifies as an infringing act or not. Most prominently, two decisions of the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) have denied a general rule that any presentation of goods or services on a trade show justifies…

Case reported and summarised by Gregory Bacon, Bristows LLP Mr Justice Carr has issued an interesting interim judgment regarding the jurisdiction of the English Court to grant negative declarations in relation to patent applications before the EPO (Fujifilm Kyowa Biologics v Abbvie Biotechnology [2016] EWHC 425 (Pat)). The case concerns an application by Fujifilm Kyowa…