What happens in Germany’s bifurcated patent litigation system, if – during pending infringements proceedings – the nullity court declares the patent partly invalid? The patentee can amend its infringement action accordingly. The infringement action is then based on the patent claim as amended by the nullity court, and not on the patent claim as initially…
In a recent decision the Federal Swiss Supreme Court reversed a decision rendered by the Civil Court of the Canton Basel-Stadt in a case between Novartis and Teva Pharma concerning Teva’s product Fluvastatin-Teva Retard because the judgment did not contain a written statement of grounds. The patent litigation community eagerly awaits the new Federal Code of Civil Procedure that will enter into force on 1 January 2011. After the harmonization of the Swiss civil procedural law, the issue of missing reasoning and statements of ground should not arise anymore.
Vitreo’s patent application for ‘means for application of a vitreous body for the purposes of prevention and medical treatment of ophthalmic disorders’ was denied by the patent office, because the claimed invention was considered to be excluded from patentability both as a method for medical treatment of human beings or animals through therapy or surgery…
In Italy, patent cases are heard by judges of the IP Chambers of 12 district courts distributed in the Italian territory. Italian judges are therefore IP specialists, but they have a merely legal, and not technical, background. This is why in all patent cases judges appoint court experts to review the technical issues at stake…
Denmark, as one of only a very few countries in the Western world, has no specialty patents court(s) for first instance PI proceedings. Instead, an application for a PI is heard by the bailiff’s department of the city courts (being the first instance courts) with an automatic right of appeal to the High Court. In…
As previously reported, the Patents County Court was re-launched on 1 October 2010 under the auspices of His Honour Judge Birss QC. The issue of transferring proceedings between the Patents Court of the High Court and Patents County Court was the subject of numerous disputes before the Patents County Court before it was re-launched and…
The new French law implementing the London Protocol is immediately applicable, even to European patents granted before the entry into force of this new law. The Court held that the new law was procedural and should, as such, be enforced immediately with retroactive effect. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer…
The Enlarged Board of Appeal answered the question referred to it by the Board of Appeal in J 2/08. The Enlarged Board of Appeal held that after a decision to refuse a European patent application, the application remains pending, in the sense that a divisional application can be validly filed, until the expiry of the…
In the past, Italian courts have regularly dismissed motions for interlocutory (pre trial) declaratory judgements of non infringement in IP cases. The firm belief of the courts was that interlocutory proceedings could not be used to obtain DJ orders for a number of procedural reasons. The Scott Paper decisions of the Italian provincial court of…
European patent practitioners are welcoming the news that the EPO Administrative Council reached a decision on 26 October 2010 to extend the period for responding to a communication under Rule 161 EPC from one month to six months as of 1 May 2011. Since 1 April 2010, practitioners have been put under considerable pressure as…
