In a judgment issued on September 28, 2010, the Court of First Instance of Paris held that a dosage regime is effectively a method of treatment and is, as such, excluded from patentability in view of Article 53c of EPC 2000. In this particular case, the use of finasteride for the treatment of androgenic alopecia…
If a party decides to participate in another party’s challenge to a patent so it may share in the benefits of a victory, it may well be ordered to share the costs burden of losing. Actavis was therefore ordered to pay half of Eli Lilly’s costs of successfully defending the revocation actions brought by Dr…
The District Court of The Hague revoked Glaxo’s European Patent and Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) for an inhalable combination of fluticasone and salmeterol due to lack of inventive step. This decision is put in a pan-European perspective, with reference to the UK case law on inventive step, as well as the parallel English, German and…
The Supreme Court specifically addresses the issue of consideration of decisions issued in parallel cases before the European Patent Office or before national courts in EPC Member States and holds that such decisions may not be left unconsidered. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
The mere filing of an application for marketing authorization of a generic drug does not constitute an infringing activity., although of a preparatory nature as, aAlthough it is true that the filing of such an application may constitute the basis for the marketing of the drug, there still is the possibility that the eventual act…
The Supreme Court held that if someone exports goods from Germany and it is not proven that the same person imported them into Austria, there is no infringement of patent rights in Austria, even when the goods are assigned to be imported into Austria. In this particular case the Court of first instance carried out…
The question in dispute was whether ratiopharm’s escitalopram was produced using Lundbeck’s patented process The Court considered that a reversal of the burden of proof in favour of the patentee might, in appropriate cases, be applied for process patents. However, in this case it was not disputed that the process developed and patented by ratiopharm’s…
In a decision by the Svea Court of Appeal, a preliminary injunction granted by the Stockholm District Court against the company Niconovum AB, was lifted. The Court held that the patent of McNeil AB was probably not valid, despite a request by the patentee for reformulation of the patent claims during the proceedings. The Court…
In this case the Court confirmed that an invention can be patentable only if it affects matter by its industrial application. A patentable invention must involve a material creation of a new construction, composition or a new manner of technical influence on matter. In the category of ‘devices’, internal structure of a device is determined…
In this case the Court held that a previous patent application and other scientific publications which did not disclose the invention in a manner sufficiently complete for it to be carried out by a person skilled in the art, could not influence the novelty of the invention for which that patent application was later filed….
