by Pat Treacy, Sophie Lawrance, Francion Brooks and Helena Connors Yesterday, the Court of Appeal handed down its highly anticipated appeal judgment in Unwired Planet v Huawei. The unanimous judgment dismissed Huawei’s appeal, confirming Mr Justice Birss’ first instance decision in relation to the FRAND licensing of standard-essential patents (“SEPs”). The Court of Appeal considered…
On 10 October 2018 the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in the matter of Icescape Limited v Ice-World International BV & Ors*. Three discrete issues were considered by the Court and, although the decision of the Lord Justices of Appeal ultimately did not change the effect of the first instance judgment, the opinions…
AstraZeneca had filed an application for interim relief based on two patents, DK/EP 1250138 T4 (“EP 138”) and DK/EP 2266573 T3 (“EP 573”) against Sandoz, which conceded that to the extent that the patents were valid, the Sandoz product “Fulvestrant Sandoz” infringed upon the two patents. Sandoz took the position, however, that the patents should…
In a previous post here, we described constitutional and procedural challenges to inter partes review (“IPR”) in the Oil States and SAS Institute cases taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court. We also posted here on Allergan’s attempt to avoid an IPR by assigning its challenged patents to an American Indian tribe that claims tribal…
Since the Eli Lilly v. Canada award of 2017, the relevance of international investment law for patents has been known to a wider public. In response to the revocation of two Canadian patents concerning the compounds olanzapine and atomoxetine by Canadian courts, the US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly initiated arbitral proceedings against Canada on the…
On 12 July 2017, the UK Supreme Court handed down a ruling which caused a shockwave to resound across the UK patent community. For more than a decade, when addressing the issue of the construction and infringement of a patent, every practitioner would have focussed on the question prescribed by Lord Hoffmann in Kirin Amgen:…
After a decade-long hiatus, so-called Arrow declarations are now firmly back in fashion after the Court of Appeal’s judgment last year in Fujifilm Kyowa Kirin Biologics Co, Ltd v Abbvie Biotechnology Ltd & Anor [2017] EWCA Civ 1. To recap, what are now known as Arrow declarations originate from the decision in Arrow Generics Ltd…
by Claire Phipps-Jones On 24 April 2018, Roger Wyand QC (sitting as a deputy judge in the High Court) held that a patent belonging to Freebit was invalid and not infringed by Bose’s flexible in-ear earpieces. The key points of interest in the decision concerned construction and the fact evidence relied on in relation to…
Whilst being wary of placing too much emphasis on statistics (the phrase “lies, damn lies and statistics” comes to mind), the authors have seen figures which suggest that the last ten years have consistently seen English patent litigation outcomes which are overall less favourable to the patentee than their opponents. That is until 2017, when…
The Hague courts are not reluctant to cross borders in patent litigation. The Dutch cross-border injunction is one (in)famous example. Maybe it’s the lack of mountains providing – on the spare sunny days – clear views to foreign skies. In two recent cases The Hague District Court has embraced a pan-European approach to the threat…
