The District Court held a patent entitled “Special Alcoholic Drink” invalid, due to lack of novelty and clarity as a non-enabling disclosure. Furthermore, the Court dismissed the invalidity action filed against the Patent Office, holding that it was neither the inventor nor the patent holder and also because it had only taken into account the…

This past week I had an interesting hearing at the EPO where an opposition was based, inter alia, on public prior use. The opposition division heard a number of witnesses on the question whether the features of a specific device had been publicly available. Prior to the hearing, the opponent had to admit that there…

As of September 16, 2012, third parties have been able to make “Preissuance Submissions” of printed publications in pending U.S. patent applications. To date, the USPTO has received just over 100 Preissuance Submissions. This article looks at important timing and disclosure requirements that parties considering making such submissions should keep in mind when deciding whether to…

On September 16, 2012, inter partes review proceedings became available against U.S. patents and post-grant review proceedings became available against certain U.S. business method patents. In two weeks, seventeen petitions for inter partes review have been filed and eight petitions for post-grant review have been filed. This article takes a brief look at these new proceedings.

The interesting six-jurisdiction patent case between two of the world’s leading enzyme manufacturers, the Danish companies Danisco A/S (now part of DuPont) and Novozymes A/S has already been subject to earlier blogs both here and several times on EPLAW and PatLit. To recap the story briefly, Novozymes started the proceedings by applying for a preliminary…

The objection raised by the opponent that the protected subject matter of a divisional application extends beyond the content of the parent application does not represent a “fresh ground for opposition”,. This bbecause in the present case i.c. the opposition division hadhas earlier raised an unrelated objection earlier, holdinstating that the patent based on the…

Litigation and EPO Oppositions/Appeals surrounding a controlled-release dosage form of the drug oxycodone, a morphine-like opioid analgesic developed in 1918, has kept Europe’s Pharma IP Lawyers busy for a couple of years. One of the key EP patents in this battle has been EP 722 730, and almost everything about this patent is out of…