In this case the FCJ expanded on earlier case law regarding claim construction, in particular how a term used in the claim language should be interpreted in light of the specification and the entire set of claims. The Court held that the subject matter of the main claim can generally not be limited by a…
The Board of Appeal decided that the invention was not sufficiently disclosed, as no seeds had been deposited and a skilled person could not obtain the claimed plants on the basis of the information in the application. More specifically, it was not possible for the skilled person to ascertain what the parental strain “Capsicum annuum…
In this case the FCJ dealt with the prerequisites for equivalent infringement. In particular it gave further guidance in relation to the so-called “3rd Schneidmesser question” which concerns the parity of a variant with the patented solution. The FCJ held that the considerations of the skilled person leading to an assessment of the variant as…
A federal district court erred in ruling that 34 claims of a patent on a system and method of using a graphical indicator were invalid as indefinite, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled. Because a skilled artisan would understand, with reasonable certainty, the meaning of the term “visually negligible,” and…
Although it did not admit a broader claim 1, an EPO board of appeal allowed an auxiliary request wherein claim 1 as granted was replaced by a combination of independent claims from different first instance requests. This combination was admitted because the first instance department had had the opportunity to decide on both claims in…
by Steven Willis Yesterday, the Patents Court handed down yet another decision in the Sisyphean pregablin litigation, this time refusing Sandoz’ application to vary the Order for Injunction which resulted from Arnold J’s October 2015 decision (“Sandoz I”) to injunct Sandoz following its launch of a full label pregabalin product (“Pregabalin Sandoz”). As is typically…
On 21 October 2016, the Federal Court of Australia handed down its judgment in the case of Apotex Pty Ltd v Warner-Lambert Company LLC (No 2) [2016] FCA 1238 (FCA Judgment). Justice John Nicholas found in favour of Warner-Lambert, both upholding the validity of its patent claims and granting final injunctions restraining infringement by Apotex….
Introduction by Brian Cordery and Rik Lambers “As many readers will know, the English High Court ruled on a legal challenge as to whether the government could trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty without parliamentary approval. The post below by Maria Kendrick explains that the Judges ruled broadly that parliament is supreme in UK constitutional…
by Steven Willis Yesterday, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in Idenix v Gilead [2016] EWCA Civ 1089, a dispute involving SOVALDI® (sofosbuvir), which is sold by Gilead as a treatment for chronic hepatitis C infection in adults. At first instance, Arnold J held (in an epic 621 paragraph judgment) that Idenix’s Patent…
In this case the FCJ expanded on earlier case law regarding claim construction and in particular on the issue of whether a certain embodiment would fall within the scope of protection by way of equivalence if the specification in the patent described various options, but only incorporated one of those options into the claim wording….
