The results of the EPO’s online user consultation on a procedural option for postponing examination of a European patent application have now been published and are available here (pdf). To cut a long story short, users’ opinions are quite divided. The overall result is surprisingly similar to the result of the Brexit referendum (52% in…
On 1 February 2019, the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court granted an injunction against Mylan AB’s sale of the product Tadalafil »Mylan« containing 5 mg tadalafil in Denmark. On 7 September 2018, Eli Lilly Danmark A/S (“Eli Lilly”) brought a case to the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court requesting a preliminary injunction against Mylan AB…
Patent for automating the collection and manipulation of bedside medical data did not provide any specific improvements to the way conventional computers operate. Therefore, the patent claims were invalid. Case date: 26 February 2019 Case number: No. 18-1284 Court: United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer…
On 4 March 2019, we uploaded a post noting that the English Patents Court had decided to refer a question to the CJEU on whether it was permissible for a patentee to rely on a third party’s MA to obtain an SPC in the absence of consent from that third party. We briefly summarised the…
In preliminary injunction proceedings, the Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 15) ruled on the interpretation of the wording “protected by a basic patent” in Article 3.a) of the SPC Regulation, on the same facts decided by the High Court of Justice of England and Wales in the 2018 judgment in Teva v Gilead and, following…
Access to seized goods and data should be denied in preliminary proceedings if the seized material contains trade secrets and there is a serious chance that the patent will be held invalid. Case date: 01 February 2019 Case number: C/09/557229 / KG ZA 18-771 Court: Provisions Judge of the District Court of The Hague A full summary of…
The Federal Court of Justice confirmed that German Courts should take into consideration decisions rendered by the EPO deciding bodies and Courts of other EPO member states. If the decisions differ, the German Courts should deal with the earlier reasons in detail. Case date:04 April 2017 Case number: X ZR 61/15 Court: Federal Court of Justice…
On Friday 1 March 2019, Arnold J handed down his judgment in the patent dispute between Eli Lilly and Genentech regarding IL-17A/F antibodies*1. This lengthy judgment, which as the Judge observed: “was one of most complex patent cases I have ever tried”, is littered with interesting legal points. However, to many life sciences patent lawyers,…
Not much time for blogging today, but yet another referral to the Enlarged Board may deserve our attention. TBA 3.5.03 referred the following questions to the Enlarged Board, of which question 3 may have the greatest Impact: 1. Ist im Beschwerdeverfahren das Recht auf Durchführung einer mündlichen Verhandlung gemäß Artikel 116 EPÜ eingeschränkt, wenn die…
In nullity proceedings initiated by Accord Healthcare (“Accord”) the District Court of The Hague has held Shire-NPS Pharmaceuticals’ (“NPS”) patent EP 1 203 761, the basic patent for an SPC covering cinacalcet, invalid for lack of inventive step and declared the SPC null. In short, the court considered that the (selection of) cinacalcet provided no…
