The Technical Board of Appeal ruled that a claim of an opposed patent was anticipated by the publication of a divisional of that same patent. Because the claim contained an intermediate generalization with respect to the priority document, the claim was not entitled to priority. The divisional was however entitled to claim priority for the…
An invention entailing a talking doll with the ability to send e-mails was held to be unpatentable. The Board of Appeal rejected applicant’s argument that the invention was in the technical field of stuffed animal toys or dolls. There was no contribution in that field because the claim features did not change the toy’s design…
The applicability of the obvious to try question has been a thorny issue in UK patent law for some time, and the desire for a party seeking invalidity to apply this test has pervaded many recent pharmaceutical patent cases in the UK, particularly where the patent claims a single enantiomer and the prior art indicates…
Historically, damages used to be calculated in the so-called “execution” (i.e. enforcement) phase of the proceedings, i.e. a second phase of the proceedings aimed at implementing the declarations and orders included in the judgment handed down after declaratory infringement proceedings. Due to the abuse of this system, in practice, the “execution” phase resulted in complex…
The District Court held a patent entitled “Special Alcoholic Drink” invalid, due to lack of novelty and clarity as a non-enabling disclosure. Furthermore, the Court dismissed the invalidity action filed against the Patent Office, holding that it was neither the inventor nor the patent holder and also because it had only taken into account the…
The act of including a generic product into the official Austrian pharmaceutical product index before expiry of the relevant patent/SPC, is considered an act of “putting into circulation” and therefore a patent infringement. By the same token the act of applying for reimbursement by an application to be included into the “Red Box” pursuant to…
The German Supreme Court this year passed two major decisions on the requirements for invoking a right to prior use. In its Desmopressin decision (June 12, 2012, X ZR 131/09), the Supreme Court ruled that knowledge regarding technical effects is not required for a prior user to be in possession of an invention as long…
Since French Act No. 2007-1544 of 29 October 2007, which implemented Directive No. 2004/48/EC into French law, it is expressly stated in Article L. 615-1 of the French Intellectual Property Code (IPC) that “Any violation of the rights of the owner of a patent (…) shall constitute an infringement. An infringement shall imply the civil liability of the infringer”. The…
In a recent decision by the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court, the issue was whether a technical feature may consist in information attached to an object if such information increases the usability of the object. The case T-66-07, Svenco Papperssäcker AB v. Segezha Packaging A/S, Svenco had filed suit claiming infringement of its Danish patent…
In a recent decision the new Swiss Federal Patent Court confirmed that it adheres to the case law with regard of the wording of prayers for relief in Swiss patent proceedings. Unlike in other jurisdictions, plaintiffs in Swiss patent proceedings must be very careful if they just adopt the wording from their patent claims in…
