A board of appeal of the European Patent Office held that a conditional request for oral proceedings filed with a notice of opposition remains effective after appeal and remittal to the opposition division, even when the party fails to restate the request in response to an invitation for requests by the opposition division after the remittal….
For bringing a “frivolous” appeal of a district court’s claim construction order in a patent dispute over a portable camera convertible support device, AdjustaCam, LLC, has been ordered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to pay Newegg, Inc., Newegg.com, Inc., and Rosewill, Inc. (collectively, “Newegg”) their attorney fees, expenses, and costs…
The countdown to the new Unitary Patent system has begun. The Unified Patent Court is expected to open its doors at the start of 2017, preceded by a provisional phase in 2016 for the practical set up of the Court and the recruitment of judges and staff. Not only European patent specialists are preparing, companies…
The lack of provisions on Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs) is seen as a major flaw in the new Unitary Patent (UP) system. Initiatives have been taken to address this issue and recently the European Commission put it on its action list. Why doesn’t the UP Regulation include a provision for SPCs? Anja Lunze, attorney at…
Mr Justice Carr has only been sitting as a full time judge for just over a month and yet in his decision of 16 November 2015, he has already produced what this author considers to be a sensible, but thought-provoking judgment that is readable and comparatively concise. The case involved a challenge by the well-known…
Readers will not be surprised on reading that the new Spanish Patent Act, which is due to come into force on 1 April 2017, establishes a remuneration right in favour of employees who have made an invention when their personal contribution and the importance of the invention clearly exceed the explicit or implicit contents of…
by Dr. André Sabellek In a recent judgment the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf (OLG Düsseldorf) had to deal with the application of the “Specific Mechanism” for parallel imports of pharmaceuticals if those pharmaceuticals are protected by a supplementary protection certificate (SPC) (judgment of August 6, 2015, court docket: 2 U 21/15 – Ezetimib, <http://www.duesseldorfer-archiv.de/?q=node/6461>)….
A patent holder’s application to reissue his patent with altered, broader claims was properly rejected by a patent examiner and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board based on the anticipation of the claims by prior art, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (In re Taylor,…
The assessment of inventive step is a legal assessment which can be reviewed by the Supreme Court through what is known as the “cassational appeal”. The Supreme Court confirms the validity and suitability of the “problem-and-solution approach” to assess the inventive step requirement and that it is not sufficient that the expert in the field…
In an appeal from an opposition decision that maintained the patent, an EPO board refused to admit an auxiliary request that had been filed by the proprietor during opposition and formally re-entered with the initial response to the grounds of appeal. Other than implicitly through arguments about the main request, the response failed to take…
