The Court of Appeal of the Unified Patent Court has refused as inadmissible applications by law firms Mathys & Squire and Bristows to intervene in an appeal concerning public access to documents filed with the Court. As is explained in a press release of Mathys & Squire, in October ‘the UPC’s Nordic-Baltic regional division granted…

On 20 December 2023, the UK Supreme Court handed down its highly anticipated judgment in the case of Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks [2023] UKSC 49, unanimously ruling that only a natural person can be named as an inventor on a patent application.  In doing so, the Supreme Court upheld the decisions…

As readers will be well aware, one of the preferred hobbies of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) is to issue controversial judgments in intellectual property matters which, quite often, instead of providing guidance to national courts, raise more questions than they answer. After the Christmas break, the CJEU seems to have…

The EPO’s Boards of Appeal are famously strict on added matter. But normally applicants can sleep soundly at night after making amendments based entirely on the original dependent claims having appropriate back references, especially where the amendments still cover the examples. T 1137/21 however might cause some applicants sleepless nights, as the Board found the…

On November 28, 2023, the Tokyo District Court issued a preliminary injunction order against Sawai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (“Sawai”) to suspend the manufacture and sale of Sawai’s pharmaceutical product (“Sawai’s Product”) developed and sold as a generic drug of Bristol-Myers Squibb (“BMS”)’s cancer drug “Sprycel®” (Case No. 2023 (Yo) 30214; AIK represented BMS in this…

On December 12, 2023, the President of the BRPTO gave a normative and binding character to four Opinions of the Specialized Federal Attorney’s Office, imposing restrictions on the actions available to applicants when appealing first instance decisions. Particularly, the Opinion limits the provisions of the Brazilian Patent Statute which guarantee the “full devolutive effect”. Similarly…

On 4th December 2023, the Intermediate People’s Court of Chongqing Municipality in China handed down its FRAND determination in the global 5G patent licensing dispute between patent owner Nokia and the Chinese implementer Oppo. The Finnish multinational has already confirmed that it will appeal the decision, which marks the first time a court has issued…