On 27 October 2010 the Court of Rome issued a decision in the Janssen – Menarini v. EG case concerning the active substance nebivolol. This is one of the few reported cases on enantiomer patents in Italy. In more detail, the basic patent inter alia disclosed an AB compound (so called compound 84) formed of…
The Supreme Court held that if someone exports goods from Germany and it is not proven that the same person imported them into Austria, there is no infringement of patent rights in Austria, even when the goods are assigned to be imported into Austria. In this particular case the Court of first instance carried out…
The question in dispute was whether ratiopharm’s escitalopram was produced using Lundbeck’s patented process The Court considered that a reversal of the burden of proof in favour of the patentee might, in appropriate cases, be applied for process patents. However, in this case it was not disputed that the process developed and patented by ratiopharm’s…
One of the topics hotly discussed before the Spanish Commercial Courts over the past month is whether “omnibus” claims included in patents granted under the 1929 Patent Act are enforceable after TRIPS came into force on 1 January 1995. In a recent judgment of 16 December 2010 deciding an appeal against a decision that had…
In a decision by the Svea Court of Appeal, a preliminary injunction granted by the Stockholm District Court against the company Niconovum AB, was lifted. The Court held that the patent of McNeil AB was probably not valid, despite a request by the patentee for reformulation of the patent claims during the proceedings. The Court…
In this case the Court confirmed that an invention can be patentable only if it affects matter by its industrial application. A patentable invention must involve a material creation of a new construction, composition or a new manner of technical influence on matter. In the category of ‘devices’, internal structure of a device is determined…
In this case the Court held that a previous patent application and other scientific publications which did not disclose the invention in a manner sufficiently complete for it to be carried out by a person skilled in the art, could not influence the novelty of the invention for which that patent application was later filed….
In this decision the EBoA held that sexually crossing of plants is an ‘essential biological process’ within the meaning of Art. 53(b) EPC. Any claim that contains a step of sexually crossing therefore falls within the exception to patentability, whether or not additional technical measures (e.g. selecting) would be present. Only if a claim relates…
On the occasion of a dispute opposing the Institut Pasteur and two Chiron companies, the French Cour de Cassation rendered on 14 December 2010 an interesting decision which confirms the existing case law on three points : the “file wrapper estoppel” theory, the contributory infringement and the infringement by equivalence.
The pan-generational failure to agree a system enabling unitary patent protection among the countries of the EPC and/or EU is well known among innovators, patent attorneys and lawyers alike. Following renewed efforts in recent years, particularly under the presidencies of Sweden and Belgium, substantial stumbling blocks remain. One unfortunate development last summer was the challenge…
