A district court properly denied a plaintiff attorney fees after it had accepted an offer of judgment to settle claims for damages and equitable relief, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City has held (Steiner v. Lewmar, Inc., March 7, 2016, Chin, D.). An award of costs was proper. A full summary of…

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err in affirming a patent examiner’s obviousness rejection of 23 claims of a Hubbell patent titled “Convertible electrical device cover and method for installing same,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled (In re Hubbell Inc., April 7, 2016, per curiam). The court…

Arbitration courts (which have mandatory jurisdiction over certain patent disputes regarding generic drugs) have the authority to issue a compulsory fine for not complying with a court order, provided that there is a present or imminent non-compliance with the ordered obligation (‘non facere’). A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP…

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…

The UPC Preparatory Committee has announced the selection of judges will start soon. During its 15th meeting, on 14 April 2016 in Luxembourg, agreement was reached on the recruitment package. In its report on the meeting the Preparatory Committee writes this means ‘adverts for judicial appointments can be advertised in May. The exact date of…

In ten to fifteen years, the current differences between European patent attorneys (EPAs), lawyers and patent litigators will have diminished and a there will be a new category of professionals, who are experts in litigation at the Unified Patent Court (UPC) . This is the expectation of Koen Bijvank, president of the European Patent Litigators…