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Landmark European Patent Cases

Landmark European Patent Cases

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United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The Patents Court (Birss J) held that medac’s patent EP (UK) 2 046 332 relating to the use of a formulation of methotrexate at a concentration of about 50 mg/ml for the treatment of individuals with inflammatory autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) by subcutaneous injection, was obvious over one of the prior art…

(Indirect) infringement, Biologics, Extent of Protection, Germany, Injunction, Scope of protection

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Based on method claims, German Patent Law does not only grant the patentee an exclusive right to exercise the method on the German territory, but also a monopoly to offer, bring into circulation or to use in Germany a “fruit” that is the immediate result of the patented method (Sec. 9 (3) German Patent Act)….

Added matter, Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC

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An amendment of independent patent claim 1 during prosecution introduced a new feature. According to the Examining Division this led to the combinations of features of dependent claims 2-4 to extend beyond the disclosure of the application as filed (Art. 123(2) EPC). The Board of Appeal held that the focus of the Examining Division was…

Added matter, Case Law, Inventive step, Mechanical Engineering, United Kingdom, Validity

(Bristows)/

The Court held that a decision by the EPO relating to the UK designation was not capable of challenge. In any event, the procedure chosen by the claimant to challenge the decision (an application to correct the UKIPO register based on Rule 50 of the Patents Rules 2007) was wrong, because it required the consent…

Biologics, Case Law, Inventive step, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The Court of Appeal held that while structural approaches for determining obviousness (with reference to the Pozzoli test), are useful, the importance of the statutory test cannot be undermined. The ultimate question that the Court must address is whether it was obvious to the skilled but unimaginative addressee to make a product or carry out…

Case Law, Germany, Inventive step, Validity

(Hoffmann Eitle )/

If the patent provides a multi-level method to be applied in more than one production entity (here: the preparation of sausage casing as endless rolls and their automatic filling at the sausage manufacturers’), the “skilled person” can be a team of several persons specialized in different disciplines, e.g. mechanical engineering, process technology and food technology,…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Enforcement, Germany, Injunction

(Hoffmann Eitle )/

If replacement of a worn-out component during the lifespan of a patented combination product is expected in the relevant trade circles, this will form part of the intended and thus admissible use, unless the technical effect of the invention is reflected in such component. Otherwise replacement generally constitutes patent infringement, regardless of the component’s significance…

Belgium, Case Law, Injunction, SPC

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The Brussels Court of Appeal issued a preliminary injunction against Eurogenerics on the basis of Lundbeck’s Belgian SPC for escitalopram, despite the fact that the SPC had been invalidated in earlier proceedings, the court found that, given the suspensive effect of the appeal against the decision invalidating the SPC, a preliminary injunction could be granted…

Amendments, Case Law, EPC, Procedure

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Since Rule 140 EPC is not available to correct the text of a patent, a patent proprietor’s request for such a correction is inadmissible whenever made, including after the initiation of opposition proceedings. Click here  for the full text of this case. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.KluwerIPCases.com

Case Law, Damages, United Kingdom

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The High Court considered the extent to which a claim for damages in a patent infringement case could be extended at the damages inquiry stage. It found that whilst it is just and convenient to extend the inquiry to infringing acts of the same type as that on which the Court in the main action…

(Indirect) infringement, Germany, Injunction, Procedure, Scope of protection

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On the defendant’s side, knowing what the patent dispute is all about is essential for your strategy. Not only do you need to adjust your non-infringement arguments to the plaintiff’s assertions concerning how the features of the claim are fulfilled in the attacked embodiment. Even more importantly, the scope of an infringement verdict is determined…

Germany, Procedure

/ /2 Comments
Landmark European Patent Cases

by Rüdiger Pansch for rospatt osten pross An interesting paper comes with the case management directions of the Munich District Court after the complaint is served upon defendants. It titles “The new AGB of the Patent Chambers” while AGB stands for “Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen” meaning General Terms and Conditions, i.e. fixed terms that one party of…

(Compulsory) license, Germany

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rospatt osten pross Motorola obtained a first instance judgement against Apple, because iPhone and iPad infringe the European patent No. 1 010 336 declared essential to the GPRS standard by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute). Apple’s defence of a compulsory licence under anti-trust law failed. The German Federal Court of Justice recognised in principle that…

Case Law, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Inventive step

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The Board of Appeal had to decide whether the showing of results of a database analysis as a tree diagram could contribute to the technical character of the invention. The Board of Appeal pointed out that in this case one should take a wider view of the term “presentation of information” than just the actual…

Amendments, Case Law, EPC

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The question of whether or not a claim in a patent deriving from a divisional application covering or embracing something which was not specifically disclosed in the parent application, is not the proper standard for determining whether there has been an inadmissible extension of subject-matter. Although broadening of individual features is not prohibited by Art….

Belgium, Case Law, Enforcement, Procedure

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The Supreme Court held that disputes relating to confidential information contained in an expert’s report, filed in the framework of descriptive seizure proceedings, can be heard by the court having granted leave for these proceedings. Such disputes do not have to be adjourned until the proceedings on the merits. Click here for the full text of this…

(Compulsory) license, Enforcement, Germany

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by Stephan von Petersdorff-Campen – rospatt osten pross Where a patent has been exclusively licensed to a third party, it is this licensee who is directly prejudiced by an infringement of said patent. But a 2008 verdict by the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) also allows the patent holder as licensor to bring his own…

Amendments, Case Law, Inventive step, Novelty, Sweden, Validity

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By Giovanni Gozzo and David Nilsson The Svea Court of Appeal partially invalidated the patent of respondent Dustcontrol, insofar as claim 1 of the patent was concerned. The Court held that it could not be deduced from claim 1 that the filter cartridge at issue in claim 1 must be a unit that neither can…

Case Law, EPC, Inventive step, Public prior use

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The opponent relied on a document that was distributed in a meeting arranged by himself. The Board of Appeal held that in the present case, it did not share the view of the patentee that it was impossible for him to prove non-distribution and that therefore the burden of proof was with the opponent. In…

Case Law, EPC, Procedure

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The Opposition Division upheld a patent in a decision finding novelty over D1 and inventive step over D1 in combination with D3 or D4. The opponent filed a statement of grounds of appeal containing a new prior art document D5 and argued lack of novelty over D5 or lack of inventive step over the combination…

Germany, Procedure
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In a recent decision of 16 June 2011 the German Bundesgerichtshof has cancelled a decision of the German Bundespatentgericht because the Bundespatentgericht had not sufficiently respected the (constitutional) right of one of the parties to a fair hear-ing (“Verletzung des rechtlichen Gehörs”). At the Bundespatentgericht the parties had discussed the validity of a German utility…

(Indirect) infringement, Enforcement, Germany

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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)…

Belgium, European Union, France, Germany, Injunction, Norway, Scope of protection, SPC, United Kingdom

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Combination products (containing two or more active ingredients) raise difficult questions with respect to supplementary protection certificates (SPCs). Can a SPC be based on the market authorisation (MA) of a combination product, if the patent only covers one active ingredient? On 13 July 2011, the Advocate General at the CJEU delivered her Opinion on the…

Case Law, Equivalents, Norway, Scope of protection, SPC

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The Court, in infringement proceedings brought by Novartis against Actavis for marketing generic Valsartan, held that the assessment of infringement had to be made as of the time of infringement, not as of the priority date. This is the first decision in years in Norway taking a position on this issue. The judgement also deals…

Added matter, Case Law, Disclaimer, Inventive step, Norway, Novelty, Priority right, Scope of protection, Sufficiency of disclosure

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The Borgarting Court of Appeal overturned the district court decision which revoked the patents in suit for lack of inventive step. The Court held that even if oxycodone had been known and used to treat pain as an alternative to morphine, the skilled person could not have predicted that a controlled release formulation with oxycodone…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Norway, SPC

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The Court, in infringement proceedings brought by Novartis against Actavis for marketing generic Valsartan, held that the assessment of infringement had to be made as of the time of infringement, not as of the priority date. This is the first decision in years in Norway taking a position on this issue. The judgement also deals…

Case Law, Extent of Protection, Mechanical Engineering, Scope of protection, United Kingdom

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The Court of Appeal overturned a decision of the High Court and held that the act of replacing Shutz’s bottles in Shutz’s outer protective cages with Werit’s bottles constituted ’ making’  products protected by Shutz’s patent, which encompassed both the bottle and the cage. Click here for the full text of this case. A full summary…

Case Law, Lithuania, Procedure, SPC

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In this case the claimant  filed an application for a supplementary protection certificate (SPC), however the application was refused by the Lithuanian patent office. Appeals before national courts were unsuccessful. The Supreme Court referred the question whether the six-month period for application for an SPC begins on the date of granting Community marketing authorization, or…

(Indirect) infringement, Biologics, Case Law, Equivalents, Extent of Protection, France

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The  Supreme Court held that the US doctrine of file wrapper estoppel is not applicable under the EPC. According to the Court only Article 69 of the EPC and the Protocol on its interpretation should be applied when determining the scope of a claim. The modifications of the patent application during prosecution cannot be taken…

Case Law, Exceptions to patentability, France, Second Medical Use

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In a judgment issued on September 28, 2010, the Court of First Instance of Paris held that a dosage regime is effectively a method of treatment and is, as such, excluded from patentability in view of Article 53c of EPC 2000. In this particular case, the use of finasteride for the treatment of androgenic alopecia…

Case Law, Revocation, United Kingdom, Validity

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If a party decides to participate in another party’s challenge to a patent so it may share in the benefits of a victory, it may well be ordered to share the costs burden of losing. Actavis was therefore ordered to pay half of Eli Lilly’s costs of successfully defending the revocation actions brought by Dr…

Case Law, Enforcement, Norway, Procedure

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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…

Case Law, Sweden, Validity

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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…

Case Law, EPC, Exceptions to patentability

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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…

Germany, Procedure, Scope of protection, Validity

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What happens in Germany’s bifurcated patent litigation system, if – during pending infringements proceedings – the nullity court declares the patent partly invalid? The patentee can amend its infringement action accordingly. The infringement action is then based on the patent claim as amended by the nullity court, and not on the patent claim as initially…

Case Law, EPC, Inventive step

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The Hong Kong Polytechnic University filed a patent application for a system and process for monitoring railway tracks by means of optical fibres. The applicant argued that, whereas document D1 related to railway monitoring systems using optical fibre sensors, the skilled person, being, as railway engineers, of very conservative nature, would only consider conventional electromagnetic…

Case Law, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Inventive step

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SK Telecom filed a patent application for a system and method for financial transactions, wherein a user was allowed to load money in his account on a host computer. The examining division refused to grant a patent for lack of inventive step as the invention related to a straightforward technical implementation of an administrative banking…

Belgium, Case Law, Enforcement, Injunction

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In summary proceedings filed by Novartis, the Brussels Court of Appeal issued a preliminary injunction, enjoining Mylan from infringing Novartis’ patent for ‘pharmaceutical compositions for sustained release of Fluvastatine’, until a decision is rendered in the proceedings on the merits. The Court further held that the injunction will be lifted, if the European Patent Office’s…

Germany, Injunction

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The Appeal Court Karlsruhe has recently issued a judgement in a preliminary injunction proceeding. Plaintiff has sought to obtain a confirmation of the first instance’s judgement. Defendant had filed the appeal against the judgement by which he had been ordered to cease and desist from producing, offering and marketing the patent infringing devices after the…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, France, Novelty, Priority right, Sufficiency of disclosure

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This judgement is one of many issued in the worldwide litigation pending between Novartis and Johnson & Johnson concerning Novartis’ patent for ophthalmically compatible extended wear contact lenses. The decision contains a recapitulation of all possible grounds for invalidity of a patent. The Court rejected the detailed claims of invalidity for lack of sufficiency, dealt…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, United Kingdom

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The Court of Appeal allowed Grimme’s appeal, holding that Grimme’s patent for an agricultural machine for harvesting and separating potatoes (from other materials such as earth, clods, stones, weeds or the like) featuring rubber rollers, was inventive. Of particular interest was the Court of Appeal’s clarification of the law of contributory infringement (s.60(2) Patents Act…

Case Law, Sufficiency of disclosure, United Kingdom, Validity

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The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s finding that Novartis’ patent for ophthalmically compatible extended wear contact lenses was invalid for insufficiency. The Court of Appeal held that the patent does not teach which materials described in the specification are suitable for extended wear lenses, nor does the patent enable the skilled person to…

Case Law, Greece, Novelty, Validity

(Drakopoulos Law Firm)/

The Thessaloniki Court of Appeal held in nullity proceedings that the patent, covering ornamental light devices, lacked both novelty and inventive step. The patented subject matter was found to be known in the market and circulating in trade prior to the date of filing the application for patent protection. A full summary of this case…

Case Law, France, Procedure, Validity

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The new French law implementing the London Protocol is immediately applicable, even to European patents granted before the entry into force of this new law. The Court held that the new law was procedural and should, as such, be enforced immediately with retroactive effect. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer…

(Compulsory) license, Case Law, Damages, Greece

(Drakopoulos Law Firm)/

The question at issue was whether a verbal preparatory agreement between the parties on a patented invention had given rise to a valid license agreement and ensuing entitlement to damages. The Supreme Court affirmed an earlier Court of Appeals decision, for the most part, by finding that a (patent) license agreement must be in written…

Case Law, Jurisdiction, United Kingdom, Validity

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The Court of Appeal has held that the skilled person (which can be a team of individuals) may vary depending on the question in issue (e.g. obviousness, novelty, sufficiency or construction). The patents in suit taught the use of marine Controlled Source Electromagnetic (“CSEM”) surveying to locate oil or gas. For the purposes of sufficiency…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law

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In this case the Supreme Court affirmed that the transfer of a computer program could be regarded as an act of indirect patent infringement. Although the commissioned research and development of the program was covered by the experimental use/research exemption, a majority of three judges held that the transfer of the results of such research…

Case Law, Extent of Protection, United Kingdom

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The Court of Appeal held that AGA’s patent was not infringed by Occlutech in a case of septal occlusion devices, which feature braided metal strands and have a collapsed configuration for delivery through a channel in a patient’s body.Occlutech’s devices, which feature strands that are welded at one end of the device were found to…

Case Law, France, Novelty, Validity

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In this case, the Court of Appeal of Paris affirmed a judgement of the Court of First Instance of Paris holding that a product “may not acquire novelty simply because it is prepared in a purer form”. The Court decided that “the parameters that are not inherent to the chemical compound itself, but rather are…

Case Law, Exceptions to patentability, Germany, Validity

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The German Federal Court of Justice decided that a method concerning the dynamic document generation of structured documents in a client-server-environment, which is implemented by software, was not excluded from patent protection as a program for data processing systems. A method is always of technical nature if it concerns the direct interaction of elements of…

Belgium, Case Law, Inventive step, Second Medical Use, Validity

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This matter concerns levocetirizine, which is an enantiomer of cetirizine. The Court held that, at the priority date, it would have been obvious to the skilled person to check whether levocetirizine (which had been individually disclosed before the priority date) had improved pharmacological characteristics compared to the racemic mixture (i.e. cetirizine). As a rule, resolving…

Case Law, Enforcement, France, Injunction, Validity

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In this case the Court of Appeal of Lyon affirmed the first French judgement granting an interlocutory injunction to prevent imminent infringement of a patent. The President of the First Instance Court had not considered any argument relating to the validity of the patent, and decided that in summary proceedings, only the existence of the…

Case Law, Germany, Novelty, Validity

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The German Federal Court of Justice has maintained Microsoft’s patent relating to alternative handling of short and long filenames. In the first instance, the Federal Patent Court considered the teaching of the patent not inventive over the Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol used for CD-ROMs. However, supported by a court expert the Federal Court of Justice…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Exceptions to patentability

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The G3/08 opinion concerns the long-awaited view of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBoA) on the patentability of computer programs. The EBoA examined various issues regarding Article 112(1)(b) EPC. The EBoA held that positions taken in T1173/97 and T424/03 were clearly contradictory on the question whether it makes a difference whether a computer program is…

Belgium, France, SPC

(Crowell & Moring)/ /2 Comments
Landmark European Patent Cases

In the beginning of 2010, Merck Sharp & Dohme (hereafter “Merck”) and E.I. Du Pont de Nemours (hereafter “Du Pont”) on the one hand and Mylan on the other hand entailed in a fight concerning the launch of a generic version of Cozaar Plus®. The Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) of Cozaar Plus®, a combination product consisting of losartan and HCTZ, would expire on 15 February 2010, but Merck and Du Pont tried to prevent the marketing of generic versions of Cozaar Plus® by invoking the SPC for Cozaar®, the monoproduct consisting of Losartan only. In Belgium and France, this case led to very diverging judgments on the interpretation of the SPC Regulation.

EPC, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

One of the most disputed topics within the patent community is whether or not the patent prosecution history should be taken into account when interpreting the scope of protection of the claims. Whereas U.S. Courts have traditionally accepted the so-called “file-wrapper estoppel” or “patent prosecution estoppel” defence, the answer on this side of the Atlantic…

EPC, Inventive step, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The English Court of Appeal dismissed Novartis’ appeal against the finding of the Patents Court that Novartis’ patent for a sustained release formulation of fluvastatin was invalid for obviousness. The case was unusual because, at first instance, Warren J. had held the patent to be inventive on a conventional analysis but then went on to find it obvious using an acontextual approach. The Court of Appeal discussed the correct approach to the question of obviousness in English law, by reference to both the problem and solution approach developed by the European Patent Office and the established four-step approach developed by the English Courts in Windsurfing v Tabur Marine and Pozzoli v BDMO .

Case Law, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Inventive step, Scope of protection

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This case relates to the opposition against Amazon’s famous ‘one-click’ patent. The Board ruled that what is required for obtaining patent protection for a software-implemented business method is that the software should contribute to a technical effect which goes beyond the mere implementation of the business method itself. The Board held that although computer-implemented business…

Case Law, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Inventive step, Sufficiency of disclosure

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In this case the Board ruled that features providing a displayed icon of a three-dimensional appearance have technical character and thus should be considered when assessing inventive step. According to the Board these features specify how the information is displayed and not what is displayed so that these features do not fall under the category…

Enforcement, France, Scope of protection

(Véron & Associés)/ /1 Comment
Landmark European Patent Cases

In the UK, the signal “Another train coming” flashes when there is more than one railway line over an automatic crossing and another train is approaching. If you have avoided the first train, you must pay attention to the other train approaching not to be hit by it. We can take a similar warning from the order handed down on 12 February 2010 by the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris: the expiry of a SPC covering a combination of two active ingredients does not allow the exploitation of that combination if another SPC covering only one of those active ingredients is still in force: such exploitation infringes this SPC.

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Netherlands, Novelty, Scope of protection

(Brinkhof)/

The District Court of The Hague holds the Dutch part of Eli Lilly’s olanzapine patent and SPC invalid because the substance olanzapine has been directly and unambiguously disclosed in a prior art document. According to the Court, the person skilled in the art will immediately recognize the error and the correction for this error in…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Enforcement, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

On 1 March 2010, Commercial Court number 1 of Pamplona handed down a judgement dismissing a declaratory non-infringement action filed by L.C. against N. The Court rejected the claim in its entirety, on the ground that L.C. lacked “locus standi”, as it was not L.C. but a third party who was supposedly to carry out…

Case Law, EPC, Sufficiency of disclosure

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In this case, the Board of Appeal had to decide whether a claim containing a feature for which the description contained erroneous figures only met the requirements of Article 83 EPC (sufficiency of disclosure) and Rule 27(1)(e) EPC 1973 (corresponding to Rule 42(1)(e) EPC 2000). The Board of Appeal decided that a patent application should…

Case Law, Employee invention

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The Supreme Court confirmed the Court of Appeal’s decision that the certification of the status of creator of a technical achievement is an indispensable condition for monetary compensation of an employee by an enterprise. Since the plaintiffs have not requested or received any documents recognizing their status as creators of a technical achievement, their claim…

Case Law, Extent of Protection, Injunction, Scope of protection, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

In this case the Commercial Court lifts an ex parte preliminary injunction against the launch of several generics of Pramipexol after an inter partes hearing. The ex parte decision was grounded on a Supplementary Protection Certificate based on a patent granted under the 1929 Patents Act. One of the claims of the patent was construed…

(Cross-border) jurisdiction, (Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Equivalents, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

The Barcelona Court of Appeal found that the process used by the defendants to obtain amlodipine was not equivalent to the process protected by the patent in suit. The Court relied on the three Catnic questions test, applied by the English Courts until 2004, to come to this conclusion that the patent was not infringed…

Biologics, Case Law, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Industrial application, Opposition, Second Medical Use

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The Enlarged Board of Appeal answers three questions of law as follows: Question 1: Where it is already known to use a medicament to treat an illness, Article 54(5) EPC does not exclude that this medicament be patented for use in a different treatment by therapy of the same illness. Question 2: Such patenting is…

Case Law, Disclaimer, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Mechanical Engineering

(V.O.)/

1. The Enlarged Board of Appeal considered the meaning that is to be given to the exclusion of patents on methods for ‘treatment by surgery’ (Article 53(c) EPC). The current construction used by the boards and the EPO as any non-significant intervention on the structure of an organism by conservative procedures was found to be…

Biologics, Case Law, Industrial application, United Kingdom

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The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s judgment that HGS’ patent relating to a new protein called Neutrokine-α was invalid for lack of industrial application. The Court of Appeal agreed with the High Court’s determination that uses for Neutrokine-α disclosed in the patent were not plausible at the time the patent was filed as…

Biologics, Case Law, Inventive step, Novelty, United Kingdom, Validity

(Bristows)/

The case concerned the validity of a ‘selection patent’. The Court of Appeal held that there is no special approach to be adopted in determining the validity of selection patents and that UK law should be consistent with EPO jurisprudence. For novelty, a prior disclosure of a large class of compounds does not take away…

Case Law, EPC, Opposition

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The patent proprietor appealed a decision of the Opposition Division, wherein the Opposition Division decided to maintain the patent in amended form. In appeal the patent proprietor filed a new main request and seven auxiliary requests. The second auxiliary request corresponded to the request that was found allowable by the Opposition Division. The Board of…

Case Law, EPC, Exceptions to patentability

(V.O.)/

In this case the board ruled that a claimed measurement method was excluded as a method of treatment by therapy under Article 53(c) EPC because it encompassed administering a compound that could have a therapeutic effect. It did not matter that the purpose of the relevant claim feature was not therapeutic, or that the proprietor…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Inventive step, Novelty, Spain, Validity

(Clifford Chance)/

After a fresh analysis in light of evidence provided by the complainant, the Barcelona Court of Appeal confirmed the novelty of Calcium Atorvastatin, as it had done in earlier judgments of 2007 and 2008. In addition, this is the first judgment in which the Court confirmed the inventive activity of this product. For its analysis…

Case Law, Extent of Protection, Mechanical Engineering, Scope of protection, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The Court of Appeal has overturned a decision of the High Court in finding Virgin’s patent for an aircraft seating system to be valid and infringed. The Court of Appeal’s judgment is of particular interest as it concerns the skilled person and general principles of claim construction. According to the Court of Appeal, the skilled…

Biologics, Case Law, EPC, Industrial application, Revocation, Sufficiency of disclosure

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In case of parallel proceedings before a national court and the Boards of Appeal, parties should inform both tribunals of this position as early as possible. In order to avoid duplication of proceedings, the parties should ask the appropriate tribunal for acceleration. Whether acceleration is requested by one party, or both or all parties in…

Belgium, Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Enforcement, Equivalents, Extent of Protection, Injunction, Scope of protection

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The Antwerp Commercial Court dismissed Merck’s claim for injunctive relief against Teva, ruling that Teva’s montelukast-based generic medicines do not infringe Merck’s European patent (EP 0 737 186) with respect to an improved process for preparation of the active ingredient montelukast, either literally or by equivalents. A full summary of this case has been published…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Inventive step, Spain, Validity

(Clifford Chance)/

The Commercial Court Number 4 of Barcelona found that although obtaining the price for generic versions of Calcium Atorvastatin by two Spanish companies from the Ministry of Health is not an act of infringement as such, the acts carried out by the defendants constituted a threat of infringement that justified a prohibition to enter the…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

In view of the need for a consistent approach to interpretation of Council Regulation (EEC) 1768/92, the Court of Appeal has referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) questions on the meaning of the term ‘the first authorisation to place the product on the market’ in Article 13(1); in particular whether the first authorisation…

Case Law, Enforcement, Netherlands

(Brinkhof)/

In this patent case the Supreme Court of the Netherlands referred two prejudicial questions to the European Court of Justice. The first question relates to the interpretation of Article 1 of the Brussels I Regulation. The second question is whether Article 14 of the Enforcement Directive is applicable on a procedure on the recognition and…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Extent of Protection, Scope of protection, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

In this judgment the Barcelona Court of Appeal concluded that any ‘preparatory acts’ (for example, submitting samples) conducted prior to the introduction in Spain of the ‘Bolar Clause’, as required by Directive 2004/27, would have been already excluded from the realm of patent infringement by the Experimental Use Exception. The Court rejected a request to…

Amendments, Antibodies, Biologics, Case Law, EPC

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This decision of the Board of Appeal covers two questions of interest: 1) May an Opposition Division include an obiter dictum in its decision? (The answer in this case is yes.) 2) To what extent is amendment in the background section of the description allowed in a divisional application? A full summary of this case…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Exceptions to patentability

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The appellant in this case filed a statement of grounds against the decision of the examining division to refuse a patent application. For the main request this statement only stated that it was believed that the application met the requirements of the European Patent Convention and maintained the arguments presented in the examination procedure. For…

Case Law, EPC, Extension of subject matter, Mechanical Engineering

(V.O.)/

A claim violates Article 123(2) EPC when an added claim term has two reasonable interpretations, one of which violates article 123(2) EPC. An amendment selecting the interpretation that does not violate Article 123(2) is not allowed during opposition because of Article 123(3) EPC. In the view of the Board the proprietor should not be able…

Biologics, Case Law, EPC, Procedure

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1. According to the EPC, the right to object to a member of a Board of Appeal or of the Enlarged Board of Appeal is reserved to the party to the proceedings who suspects partiality in such a member. 2. It remains nevertheless that pursuant to Article 4(1) RPEBA, if the Enlarged Board of Appeal…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Germany, Inventive step, Public prior use

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The Federal Court of Justice further clarifies the scope of disclosure of a prior art document and the criteria for determining inventive step after the landmark decision ‘Olanzapin’. More specifically, the Court ruled that: a) a prior art disclosure of an enantiomeric compound does not clearly and unambiguously disclose the actual enantiomers unless the disclosure…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Inventive step

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The Examining Division had refused a patent application for a method and system of processing a payment card transaction. Before the Board of Appeal, the applicant requested suspension of the proceedings to await the opinion of the Enlarged Board of Appeal in G 3/08. The Board of Appeal refused to grant the requested suspension, because…

Added matter, Case Law, Germany, Mechanical Engineering

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The Federal Court of Justice confirmed the legal reasoning of the Federal Patent Court that a company that continued the business of another company, while it was founded independently from the continued company and does not take over the trade name under which it conducted business, is not bound by a non-contest clause between the…

Antibodies, Case Law, EPC, Sufficiency of disclosure

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The Board of Appeal decided that the following applies as regards to sufficiency of disclosure: (1) the skilled person should be able to realise without undue burden substantially any embodiment falling in the ambit of a claim on the basis of the disclosure and/or common general knowledge; (2) the objection of lack of sufficient disclosure…

Added matter, Amendments, Case Law, EPC, Novelty

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The selection of explicitly disclosed borderline values defining several (sub)ranges, in order to form a new (narrower) subrange, is not contestable under Article 123 (2) EPC when the ranges belong to the same list. However, the combination of an individual range from this list with another individual range from a second list that relates to…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Enforcement, Injunction, Inventive step, Opposition, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

On 30 July 2009, the Commercial Court of Granada ordered an ex parte preliminary injunction against two companies that had obtained authorisation to market generics of sustained-release pharmaceutical compositions of Fluvastatin in Spain. Interestingly, on 27 April 2009, Commercial Court number 3 of Madrid had rejected a request for a preliminary injunction against other companies…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Electrical Engineering, Netherlands, Prior use right

(Brinkhof)/

In these infringement proceedings initiated by Agfa against Xingraphics the Court held Agfa’s patent valid and dismissed Xingraphics cross border declaration of non-infringement due to lack of jurisdiction. Agfa’s infringement claim was dismissed as it was not sufficiently substantiated. Agfa was not allowed to supplement its evidence, since it had failed in a previous stage…

(Compulsory) license, Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Enforcement, Injunction, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

The Barcelona Court of Appeal confirmed a preliminary injunction ordered by Commercial Court number 4 of Barcelona on 9 June 2008 preventing the launch of several generics of Atorvastatin. One of the main arguments raised by the defendants in their appeal was that the company that had filed the application for a preliminary injunction did…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Novelty, Sufficiency of disclosure, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The High Court dismissed Novartis’ claim for infringement of its EP(UK) patent for ophthalmically compatible extended wear contact lenses. Although Novartis established that the defendants’ product falls within certain claims of the patent, and successfully resisted Johnson & Johnson’s novelty and obviousness attacks, the patent was found invalid for insufficiency. The Court held it would…

Case Law, Novelty, Sufficiency of disclosure, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The High Court dismissed Novartis’ claim for infringement of its EP(UK) patent for ophthalmically compatible extended wear contact lenses. Although Novartis established that the defendants’ product falls within certain claims of the patent, and successfully resisted Johnson &Johnson’s novelty and obviousness attacks, the patent was found invalid for insufficiency. The Court held it would involve…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Enforcement, Injunction, Netherlands, Validity

(Brinkhof)/

This is the first case in the Netherlands in which a patentee, whose patent was nullified in first instance in proceedings on the merits, requested a prohibition of infringement of this patent in preliminary injunction proceedings pending appeal of the first instance merits decision. The Preliminary Injunction Judge of the Court dismissed the request as…

Belgium, Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Validity

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The Brussels Court of Appeal ruled that, in calculating the period of validity of an SPC, the ‘first authorisation to place the product on the market in the Community’, within the meaning of Article 13 of the SPC Regulation, does not necessarily need to be an authorisation issued in accordance with Directive 65/55/EEC or Directive…

Case Law, EPC, Opposition, Procedure, Revocation

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In the case at hand, Olympus filed a petition for review against the decision of the Board of Appeal to revoke Olympus’ patent. Olympus argued that it had had no opportunity to comment on the grounds for this decision as it had never received the statement of the grounds of appeal and the invitation to…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Validity

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This case concerns a referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeal regarding the interpretation of the term ‘pending application’ in the wording of Rule 25(1) EPC 1973. In the appealed decision from the receiving section, the receiving section held that from the date of the refusal by an examining division an application was no longer…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, Inventive step, Revocation, United Kingdom, Validity

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The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s finding that Aerotel’s Patent relating to a method of making pre-paid landline telephone calls was invalid for want of inventive step over the principal prior art (the WATS system). Having made this finding it was unnecessary to consider Aerotel’s other grounds of appeal.Further, Aerotel’s arguments of commercial…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Inventive step, Public prior use

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During appeal proceedings, the appellant argued lack of inventive step on the basis of public prior use of a composition for making the claimed product. The prior use appeared to relate to an ordinary commercial transaction. The patentee argued that the offer, sale and delivery of the product were only for test purposes. The Board…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Inventive step, Netherlands, Revocation, Validity

(Brinkhof)/

The Hague District Court nullified Sepracor’s patent for compositions for treating allergic disorders using (-) cetirizine (levociterizine) on the basis of lack of inventive step. The Court considered that the person skilled in the art knows that the pharmaceutical efficacy of a racemic mixture generally can be attributed to one of the enantiomers. At the…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Extension of subject matter

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The claims of the patent in suit related to a memory for sensing sub-groups of memory cells that required the activation of word line segments and corresponding sets of sense amplifiers in combination. The patentee argued that from one of the objectives of the invention mentioned in the original application, the skilled person could derive…

Added matter, Amendments, Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC

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In the search report of the patent application several prior art references were mentioned that were not described in the patent application as originally filed, while they were known to the applicant. The Examining Division had decided that Rule 42(1) EPC 2000 would not allow a later introduction of the discussion of the prior art…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC

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The Board of Appeal had to decide on a main request for a divisional application that corresponded to an auxiliary request for the parent application on which the Board had already finally decided. The Board of Appeal found the appeal for the divisional application inadmissible because subject-matter on which a final decision has been taken…

(Compulsory) license, Case Law, Germany, Injunction, SEP

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The Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) ruled that a defendant in a patent infringement suit may successfully raise an antitrust defense against the issue of an injunction where the asserted patent is standard-essential and the defendant has tried to obtain a license to the patent under reasonable conditions. The full summary of this case has been published…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Validity

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Claim 1 of the patent application contained the feature that ‘the device is adapted to generate L addresses, which are smaller in number than N = Ng × 2m2 virtual addresses for reading data from said interleaver memory in which L data bits are stored’. The Board of Appeal noted that it might be true…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Exceptions to patentability

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The invention related to text mining using mathematical techniques such that information can be presented in a way that can be more easily understood or evaluated by a user. The Board of Appeal noted that it is a fundamental question whether such an invention is within a field of technology. It can hardly be regarded…

Amendments, Case Law, Extent of Protection, Germany, Mechanical Engineering, Scope of protection

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The Federal Court of Justice ruled that the subject matter of a patent does not extend beyond the content of the application as filed when terms are used in the claims that are not literally used in the application text but are summarizing words for longer descriptions in the application as filed. A full summary…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Inventive step, Netherlands, Validity

(Brinkhof)/

The District Court of The Hague held that all claims of Lundbeck’s escalitopram patent were invalid for lack of inventive step. The District Court nullified the patent and also called the Dutch Supplementary Protection Certificate which was based upon the patent null. The District Court’s decision contains many references to the 4 May 2007 decision…

Belgium, Case Law, Enforcement

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The court found that the annexes to the expert’s report, filed in the framework of descriptive seizure proceedings, contained confidential information which was not relevant to assess the alleged infringement. It therefore ordered the expert to remove the annexes from the report and enjoined Novartis from using the information contained therein, subject to a civil…

Biologics, Case Law, Extent of Protection, Scope of protection, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The Court of Appeal has overturned the High Court’s finding of non-infringement, holding Napp’s divisional patents, relating to controlled release formulations of a painkiller called oxycodone, to be valid and infringed by Ratiopharm’s and Sandoz’s ‘Cimex’ product. The Court of Appeal’s finding of infringement contrasts with decisions in Germany where the German designation of the…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Germany, Mechanical Engineering

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A patent infringement action may not be rejected on the grounds that a feature of the asserted patent claim seems to be unclear in its technical meaning. A lack of clarity may only give reason to limit the feature to the narrowest reasonable meaning. The full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.

Case Law, Spain, Validity

(Clifford Chance)/

The Provincial Court of Barcelona dismissed an appeal filed against a judgment from the Commercial Court number 4 of Barcelona, which had concluded that the product claims of the patent in suit were valid and enforceable in Spain under Articles 27.1 and 70.7 of TRIPS. The main interest of the judgment lies in the fact…

(Compulsory) license, Case Law, Germany

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The Federal Court of Justice held that a licensee’s failure to exploit an exclusive patent license can justify termination of the license agreement by the licensor, even if there is no breach of contract or default by the licensee. From an objective licensor’s perspective, however, there must be no prospect of an improvement in the…

Biologics, Case Law, Sufficiency of disclosure, United Kingdom, Validity

(Bristows)/

The patent in suit contains claims for the (+)enantiomer of citalopram and a method for its resolution from the racemate (the diol method). The Defendants appealed a decision of the Court of Appeal arguing that the patent was insufficient because it effectively claimed the (+)enantiomer made by any method whereas the specification only disclosed two…

Biologics, Case Law, Employee invention, United Kingdom

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Two research scientists, involved with the synthesis of a compound which formed the basis of a patented heart imaging agent, brought what is the first ever successful action under Section 40 of the Patents Act 1977, arguing that the patents are of outstanding benefit to their employer, and as such, they are entitled to a…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Netherlands, Novelty, Validity

(Brinkhof)/

Lack of novelty by re-working prior art requires that the re-works must inevitably lead to results falling within the claim of the patent at issue. If choices have to be made for the re-working process, the result is not inevitable.A possible breach of Article 84 EPC (clarity) does not lead to nullity. The Court states…

Case Law, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Inventive step, Mechanical Engineering

(V.O.)/

The Board reversed a refusal of the patent application for lack of technical contribution. The underlying decision had expressed the view that the idea of making chance encounters depend on time was a game rule, which is itself excluded from patentability and had been implemented in straightforward manner. In its classical sense game rules form…