Under the legal principle of forfeiture of claims a patentee can deprive himself of claims for patent infringement if he asserts them in legal proceedings at such a late stage (time factor) that the infringer from an objective perspective could trust that he would not anymore be subjected to the claims and has made dispositions…
In 1984 Albert Hedegaard submitted a national patent application to the Danish Patent Office concerning an air-assisted device for spraying crops with pesticides. Hardi International A/S filed an opposition against the patent application with the Danish Patent Office. When finally granted in 1996, the patent had been substantially limited and the claims had been amended…
As my colleague Rik Lambers, from Brinkhof, reported in the blog he posted last Thursday (12 December 2013), that day was a big day for Supplementary Protection Certificate (“SPC“) aficionados, since the European Court of Justice (“ECJ“) published three new judgments that will further feed the long-running saga of SPC decisions. Readers will no doubt…
SPC judgments galore in Luxembourg this morning. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) provided its judgments in the Eli Lilly case (C‑493/12), in the Actavis case (C‑443/12), and in the Georgetown case (C‑484/12). The CJEU’s Medeva judgment (case C-322/10), and AG Trstenjak’s opinion in that case, raised burning questions on the interpretation…
By Bernward Zollner Every now and then it is suggested that a picture or pictures be incorporated in a mo-tion of a complaint against the defendant requesting defendant to cease and desist from a certain activity (being a patent or a copyright infringement) so that defendant’s activity by described more clearly. A recent decision of…
Different views from the EPO and Germany on the same case 1. Introduction Functional features in patent claims may provide protection not only for specific embodiments disclosed in the patent specification, but also for undisclosed (future) embodiments. A classic example is a claim of the format “An inhibitor of protein P for the treatment of…
My last blog, published on 14 November 2013, mentioned that on the closing date (15 November 2013) set to send expressions of interest for persons wishing to be considered candidate Judges at the Unified Patent Court (“UPC”), only Austrian nationals would fulfil the conditions set by the Preparatory Committee, for only Austria had ratified the…
In IPCom GmbH & Co KG v HTC Europe Co Limited and others [2013] EWCA Civ 1496, the English Court of Appeal has very recently given guidance concerning the circumstances in which it is appropriate for an English court considering combined patent infringement and revocation proceedings to stay those proceedings pending the outcome of co-pending…
by Stefan Lieck Based on the act for simplification and modernization of Patent Law (“Patentrechts-modernisierungsgesetz”) patent nullity proceedings in Germany have been reformed fundamentally in order to accelerate the appeal proceedings significantly. Therefore, the Federal Patent Court (“Bundespatentgericht”) that is responsible in the first instance shall determine the facts of the case exclusively whereas the…
According to a recent decision of the Administrative Council, from November 2014 it will be possible, by paying appropriate further search fees, to obtain searches of any claimed invention when entering the EPO Regional phase with a PCT application, regardless of which Searching Authority handled the application in the International phase. It will thus be…
