The Court of Appeal held that the esomeprazole salt in Krka’s product with an optical purity of 98.8 – 99.5 % e.e. (enantiomeric excess)  was an “optically pure compound” as claimed in AstraZeneca’s patent NO 307 378. The Court of Appeal upheld the judgment of the Oslo District Court granting AstraZeneca an injunction preventing Krka…

The Bolar exemption must be interpreted narrowly in order not to affect the patent holder’s exclusive rights. The privilege of the generic drug manufacturers who are allowed to conduct clinical trials in order to seek regulatory approval for their therapeutic products based on patented inventions does not apply to their third-party suppliers. Thus, manufacturing of…

a) The applicant is not obliged to limit the protective scope to explicitly described embodiments, but may make certain generalisations to cover the entire invention. b) Whether a claim containing generalisations is enabled depends on whether the protective scope extends beyond the most generalized teaching solving the underlying problem. c) Functionally describing a group of…

The board held that a document of speculative nature could not objectively be considered as a realistic starting point or the most promising springboard towards the claimed invention: the document was no more than a speculative review of what might be potentially feasible in the future and no concrete realization of the claimed type of…

The Court of Appeal upheld the judgment of the High Court (Arnold J) that claims concerning treatment of osteoporosis with zoledronic acid were not entitled to an earlier priority date and were therefore invalid over an intervening publication. The Court held that the disclosure in the priority document was either too general or too specific,…

General disadvantages of fixed-dose combinations cannot reduce the reasonable expectation of success derivable from the prior art with respect to the formulation of a pharmaceutical composition containing two specific active pharmaceutical ingredients. A synergistic effect is not suitable to establish inventive step of a fixed-dose combination of two active pharmaceutical ingredients, where the synergistic effect…

1. Also in case a dependent claim is patentable on its own, fulfillment of all features of both the main claim and the dependent claim is required for infringement. 2. The scope of a patent is defined by its claims; the prosecution file may only be considered for interpretation if there are contradictions between the…

The Court of Appeal Düsseldorf held that the offering of certain products by the defendants was not covered by the scope of the patent due to the specific “Swiss type” wording, which does not grant an absolute product protection, and due to the fact that the advertising of the defendants did not address the patented…