As the readers may know, what is referred to as a “protective writ” is an anticipatory defensive mechanism that a person that fears to be sued for patent infringement may use in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium to put Courts on notice of the non-infringement arguments relied on by the hypothetical future…
Spanish Courts have recently decided two interesting cases that show that patent litigation is not the exclusive realm of big pharma or high tech. Patent litigation extends its tentacles to quotidian cooking tools that we and / or our most significant others use day after day in the kitchen. The first judgment, handed down by…
A long time has already passed since 23 October 2001, when Judge Jacob ordered a preliminary injunction preventing the launch of the first paroxetine generics in England. To cut a long story short, the rationale was that, if there is an obstacle blocking your way into the “garden”, you have to clear the way before…
On 10 June 2013 the Court of Appeal of Barcelona handed down a very interesting decision that appears to have written the penultimate word in the long saga of decisions discussing the meaning of “imminence.” As discussed in other blogs, although the so-called “Enforcement Directive” (Directive 2004/48/EC) was meant to strengthen the protection of intellectual…
When a preliminary injunction is lifted, the debate arises regarding the amount of damages that the company affected by the preliminary injunction may claim against the applicant. A recent judgment of 6 May 2013 from Commercial Court number 6 of Barcelona has shed some light on this topic. The background of the case can be…
One of the remedies introduced by Directive EC 2004/48, of 29 April 2004, was preliminary injunctions aimed at prohibiting acts of infringement when there are indicia indicating that an act of infringement may be “imminent.” It is the nature of preliminary injunctions, which require an element of urgency, that patentees may be required to prove…
One of the topics hotly discussed within the intellectual property family over the last few years is whether or not “transit” is an act of infringement. Since, unlike patent law, trademark law is already harmonised at the EU level, many cases have reached the ECJ, which has generated a saga of judgments that does not…
Spain adopted the optional clause in Article 65 of the EPC, which requires a translation of the patent filed with the national patent office within 3 months of publication of the patent by EPO. The Supreme Court decided that this term starts on the date of publication of the announcement of the granting of the…
The complexities of European patent architecture raise a number of issues relating to the interface between opposition proceedings before the European Patent Office (“EPO”) and infringement proceedings before national courts. A recent case has raised one of such issues, namely: what the impact should be of the revocation of the patent by the EPO in…
As the readers are well aware, quite often patented products are not necessarily marketed (or only marketed) by the patent owner. It is usual for patent owners to market their products through their subsidiaries and/or through third party co-marketers, which join forces with the former to obtain the best possible distribution of the patented product….
