In most systems, a patent is valid for 20 years from the filing date of the patent application. Patents are granted with a presumption of validity but no patent is safe from being challenged and declared (partially) invalid by national courts or, in the case of European patents, revoked by the European Patent Office. Often, a claim of invalidity of a patent is a reaction to an action of the patentee, in particular an infringement action.
by Rachel Mumby It would be an unusual case in which the parties did not criticise each other’s experts in one way or another, and indeed patent litigators in England and Wales have become no stranger to judicial criticism of the way that experts are instructed. However, in the case of American Science & Engineering…
Okay, this result, which was recently reached by TBA 3.3.04 in decision T 394/11 (in German language), may perhaps not come as a big surprise to you, since we all learnt in school that acetic acid is a classic example of an organic acid as opposed to an inorganic acid. Yet it raises two interesting…
Case reported and summarised by Gregory Bacon, Bristows LLP Mr Justice Carr has issued an interesting interim judgment regarding the jurisdiction of the English Court to grant negative declarations in relation to patent applications before the EPO (Fujifilm Kyowa Biologics v Abbvie Biotechnology [2016] EWHC 425 (Pat)). The case concerns an application by Fujifilm Kyowa…
A recent decision by the German Federal Court of Justice (Polyesterabmischungen, X ZR 90/11) relating to a patent concerning polyester resin blends may be instructive to demonstrate how an experimental report reproducing a prior art test instruction can be helpful to a nullity plaintiff, even if the description in the prior art document is incomplete…
Case reported and summarized by Gregory Bacon, Bristows LLP Mr Justice Carr is only a few months into his judicial career, but having already provided welcome guidance on the role of plausibility in considering both the questions of inventive step and sufficiency (see earlier blog post on Actavis v Eli Lilly), he has now produced…
Swiss Federal Patent Court, Case No O2013_006 (7 October 2015) The Swiss Federal Patent Court partially revoked/upheld the Swiss Part of EP 0 944 937 B1 concerning a hydraulic pressing device in nullity proceedings initiated by the Swiss Von Arx AG against the patent owner, the German Gustav Klauke GmbH. The patent in suit pertains…
…well not really, but the German Federal Court of Justice has recently issued a decision (Kreuzgestänge, X ZR 103/13) that may expose Germany’s “Bifurcation System” to even more questions and criticism than in the past. Bifurcation is a term probably originating from geography and generally means “splitting of a main body into two parts”. An…
As in other jurisdictions patentees in Swiss patent disputes often rely on the so called action by stages approach, which allows patentees to demand disclosure of information and financial accounting before the proceedings progress to the actual claim for lost profits, infringer’s profits or a royalty fee. In a recently published decision dated 25 August…
With the Judges mostly on summer vacation, August and September have given some time for reflection on several decisions from the Patents Courts in July. One of those decisions was another defeat for Rovi against Virgin from the Court of Appeal in Rovi v Virgin [2015] EWCA Civ 781. Floyd LJ. gave the leading judgment…
Some Late Summer Thoughts about Molten Polymers and two Decisions by the German Federal Court of Justice Now that the unusual heat of this summer in central Europe finally seems to have ended, it might be a good point in time to activate our cerebral bio-polymers again. So let us muse about the melting of…
