The Board of Appeal rejected an attempt to apply the fiction of novelty of “medical” substances and compositions of article 54(5) EPC to a dialysis membrane. Contrary to T2003/08 the claimed dialysis membrane did not contain any further substance that might constitute an active ingredient. With reference to arguments in T2003/08, the board noted that…
The Bulgarian Patent Office refused to issue a supplementary protection certificate for a medical product comprising three components as one of them was not within the scope of protection of the basic patent. The decision of the Patent Office was first annulled by the first instance court but subsequently upheld by the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court….
The Board emphasized that there was a relation between who was to be considered to be the skilled person for judging inventive step on one hand and the choice of the closest prior art on the other hand. A general problem to modify a product from one field so that it could be used in…
Inventions regarding a method of improving the yield of triploid seedless watermelons by pollination with a specific type of diploid water melon are not to be regarded as an essentially biological process for the production of plants and are therefore not excluded from patentability under Article 53(b) EPC. These biotechnological inventions according to Rule 26(2),…
Direct access to seized documents, selected from a larger pool of previously seized evidence, is denied on the basis of Dutch procedural provisions relating to Directive 2004/48/EC, because the defendant has not been allowed prior review of the seized selection. The court only allows access to a limited selection obtained by sufficient specific key word…
The CoA Karlsruhe held that the fact that a referral is pending before the CJEU regarding the issues of the criteria for raising the FRAND defense (C-170/13 Huawei) does not justify the suspension of the enforcement of an infringement judgment issued against a defendant. The court also expressed their expectation that – even after a…
The Oslo District Court held that the expired Norwegian patent 306452 (“452 Patent”) was invalid due to lack of inventive step, which implied that its supplementary protection certificate SPC014 was invalid as well. The court also found the 176 Patent invalid. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
When does prior private use give a party the right to continue using the invention? Any person may claim personal possession on the ground of Article L. 613-7 of the French Intellectual Property Code providing that said person proves possession of the invention prior to the filing date or priority date of the patent. In…
The Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) held that where a defendant in a patent infringement action has been found to be liable for infringement in a decision that is preliminarily enforceable but subject to appeal, it is generally necessary to suspend enforcement of this decision under Secs. 719 (2) and 707 Code of Civil Procedure…
The FCJ held that the priority of an earlier application may be rightfully claimed if the technical information described for a specific embodiment or otherwise in in the application is seen by the skilled person as an example for the more general invention disclosed in the later application and if this more general teaching was…
