On December 30, 2023, the Brazilian government, through Provisional Measure No. 1.205/2023, announced the national program “Mobilidade Verde e Inovação – Green Mobility and Innovation” (MOVER), with the objective of expanding the sustainability requirements for automobiles and stimulating the development of new technologies in the areas of mobility and logistics. The program, conceived by the…

With 1.5 billion chickens and 234.3 million cows, Brazil is an important market for the animal health industry. According to the National Syndicate of the Industry of Animal Health Products (SINDAN, in Portuguese), in 2022, 700 million doses of vaccine were manufactured in Brazil for herbivorous animals, and 21 billion for aviary. The Brazilian animal…

In December 2023, the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) of China found that Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer Oppo was responsible for infringing six Chinese standard essential patents (SEPs): 99813601.8、00815854.1、99813602.6、99813640.9、01803954.5 and 99813641.7, all related to the adaptive multi-rate wideband standard (AMR-WB) which includes audio, cellular communication, and broadband technologies. More importantly, the court established the royalty rate…

A short but nevertheless interesting judgment was handed down last week on the different roles that technical experts on the one hand and scientific advisers on the other have to play in proceedings in the English Patents Court.   The decision of Mellor J followed a case management conference in an entitlement dispute between Dr Vanessa…

Following the issuance of G 2/21 last year, we asked whether the plausibility elephant had left the room. Our Kluwer colleague and friend Miquel Montañá discussed this issue more recently here. Several decisions have meanwhile been issued applying the new “test” in G2/21, the lucidity of which may have reminded readers of the oracle of…

The Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BRPTO) has issued a new set of guidelines to clarify its recent regulations on amending patent claims during the appellate phase and help patent applicants adapt to the new policy. Last month, we published an article regarding the decision rendered by the President of the BRPTO on 12 December…

Opt-outs are dealt with in Part IV of the UPC Agreement entitled “Transitional Provisions”. The prevailing view is that these provisions should be interpreted to mean that an opted-out patent is no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the UPC and the opt out shall remain in place for the lifetime of the patent. Furthermore,…

On 19 December 2023, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in The NOCO Company v Shenzhen Carku Technology Co., Ltd  [2023] EWCA Civ 1502. The issue on appeal was whether communications between The NOCO Company (“NOCO”) and Amazon amounted to a “threat of infringement proceedings” for the purpose of s. 70 Patents Act…

On 20 December 2023, the UK Supreme Court handed down its highly anticipated judgment in the case of Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks [2023] UKSC 49, unanimously ruling that only a natural person can be named as an inventor on a patent application.  In doing so, the Supreme Court upheld the decisions…