by Stephan von Petersdorff-Campen In my post of 28 April 2011, I reported that the Düsseldorf Appellate Court (Oberlan-desgericht) does not require urgency for inspection orders, whereas urgency is re-quired for preliminary cease and desist orders. Urgency means that the patentee is compelled to apply for an interim injunction in due time (approx. 1 month)…
To stay, or not to stay, that is the question. But not in the recent Danisco v. Novozymes case before the District Court of The Hague. On the face of the Court’s decision of 22 June 2011, the question whether to stay the national proceedings pending the outcome of opposition proceedings at the EPO on…
After years of not having handed down judgments in patent cases, in recent months the Supreme Court has handed down several interesting judgments which will hopefully give more guidance to lower level Courts. The last judgment in this recent saga, handed down on 18 July 2011, has confirmed the judgment of 19 December 2006 from…
In this blog, we reported earlier about a new nullity action initiated in 2010 against the German supplementary protection certificate (SPC) for enantiomeric escitalopram and the judgment of the German Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht – BPatG) in favor of the validity of the SPC. Meanwhile, the BPatG issued the written grounds for its decision.
A method claim comprising a step of “providing a donor flow channel for conveying fluid to and from a donor” was found to be excluded from patentability as treatment by surgery and therapy. The Board derived from the description that this step required performing venipuncture and found that venipuncture required professional medical expertise to be…
This blog relates to the decision “Lungenfunktionsmessgerät” (lung function analyser) by the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) of Duesseldorf (judgement of 24 February 2011, docket no. I-2 U 122/09). The court had to deal with the differentiation between direct and indirect patent infringement. The patent in suit, EP 0 606 351, provided for an apparatus for…
Since 2009, French law has allowed patentees to voluntarily limit their granted patent claims. This possibility, which has existed for a long time in a number of European countries, (e.g. Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom) has recently been introduced into the European patent system through Art. 105bis et seq. of the…
Faced with a claim directed at a method for determining airway pressure levels, the Board isolated a step from the claim that required changing the airway pressure of an artificial ventilator to observe certain responses. The Board found that this step could not be distinguished from what a medical doctor would do in order to…
If a supplementary protection certificate (SPC) should have been denied (or granted with limited scope), because the six month application period following the date of first marketing approval has lapsed, it is entirely or partially void. There is a lack of legal interest for a negative declaratory action directed at declaring the non-existence of claims…
The Court of Appeal Duesseldorf held that, provided that the alleged infringer proves a legitimate interest in confidentiality, the presentation of the expert opinion to the patentee itself depends on whether the inspection confirms infringement. If the expert opinion confirms infringement, and if the court has no expertise in the relevant technical field, it may…
