As the clock strikes midnight on 31 December 2019, we hope that the new Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA) will not be the first thing on our minds. Nevertheless, the beginning of this new decade will mark the entry into force of these new rules, which look set to have a…
In view of the upcoming Christmas season, in light of a judgment of 15 October 2019 from the Court of Appeal of Valencia published recently, a call for caution for Father Christmas is in order. The facts of the case may be summarized as follows. The company Smart Trike MNF LTD (“Smart Trike”), which owns…
Following the 2017 revamp of the Spanish patent system, only certain courts in Barcelona, Madrid and some other industrial hubs now have jurisdiction in patent matters. However, decisions from other courts in cases brought under the old rules are still trickling in. In this case, the Zaragoza Court of Appeal delivers a judgment which contains…
The PACTE law of May 22nd [1] introduced new opposition proceedings against French patents before the French PTO. A draft amendment to the Intellectual Property Code (hereinafter referred to as “IPC”) is currently under consideration in order to specify the modalities of proceedings (deadlines, costs, remedies, etc.). This draft is submitted for consultation to representatives…
The leading Supreme Court case of Actavis v Eli Lilly [2017] UKSC 48 introduced a doctrine of equivalents into UK patent law for the first time in many years. Since then, the Court of Appeal has given further guidance on this doctrine in Icescape Limited v Ice-World International BV & Ors [2018] EWCA Civ 2219…
In its latest ruling on FRAND and the Art. 102 TFEU defense, the OLG (Higher Regional Court) Karlsruhe put an emphasis on the ‘fairness’ of the licensing negotiation procedure and thus on the ‘F’ prong of FRAND. To allow fair and expedient licensing negotiations and avoid a finding of abuse of dominance, the owner of…
“Alle Jahre wieder” (Every year) is the title of one of the most popular German Christmas songs. And alle Jahre wieder / every year there is advent time, which seems to be the perfect time for the invocation of the immediately imminent advent of the Unified Patent Court (UPC). MIP made the start with its…
On 29 November 2019, the Patents Court of England and Wales handed down it decision revoking Conversant’s UK patent relating to an improved user interface on smartphone devices. Unlike earlier infringement actions brought by Conversant against Huawei and ZTE in the UK, this action brought against Apple (and various of its subsidiaries) concerned a non…
Where an expression in a granted claim, taken literally and in isolation, would have the effect of excluding all of the disclosed embodiments from the scope of protection, but where a definition of the expression may be derived from the patent itself which would locate (at least some of) the disclosed embodiments within the ambit…
“If I listen to [judge rapporteur in the case against the Unified Patent Court Agreement] Peter Huber and the German Constitutional Court (FCC) rules at the end of March, I have the optimistic view the ruling will be a positive one.” Alexander Ramsay, chairman of the UPC Preparatory Committee, has said this in an interview…
