European Union, Patents, Unitary Patent, UPC

(Clifford Chance)/ /14 Comments

Readers who have followed our last two blog entries and the vast number of comments received, will have seen the following two conclusions surfacing. First, although the UPC ‘s Protocol on Provisional Application, in reality, may not be in force, there is nothing to worry about because there are no police around. Second, there is…

Patents, Unitary Patent, UPC

(Clifford Chance)/ /27 Comments

Our last blog entry, UPC: four reasons on why the PPA is not legally in force, published on 21 April 2022, seems to have touched a nerve, as attested by the unprecedented number of comments received, for which this author is very grateful. Some comments were supportive, while others expressed disagreement. In this blog, we…

European Union, Patents, Unitary Patent, UPC

(Clifford Chance)/ /35 Comments

Having been teaching Public International Law since 1990 and being a tenured professor of this field of law, this author has some difficulty in understanding the state of collective nirvana that the UPC Preparatory Committee has instilled amidst the UPC community, by causing them to believe that the “Protocol to the Agreement on a UPC…

ownership, Patents, Spain, Technology

(Clifford Chance)/

On 27 January 2022, the Spanish Supreme Court handed down a very interesting judgment dealing with a dispute surrounding the ownership of a patent application that claims a system to produce domestic hot and cold water. Judgments dealing with patent ownership are very scarce in Spain. Hence the interest of this case, the background to…

Patents

(Clifford Chance)/ /9 Comments

According to article 1 of the European Patent Convention (EPC), “a system of law, common to Contracting States for the grant of patents for inventions is established by this Convention.” So, at first glance, it would appear that the European Patent Organisation was meant to be an International Institution governed by the rule of law….

Spain, Utility model

(Clifford Chance)/

After four years of experience with Spanish Act 24/2015, of 24 July, on Patents (the “new Patent Act”), which came into force on 1 April 2017, the time seems ripe now to update some aspects of the Act that could be further improved. In this vein, earlier this year the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office…

Patents, Spain, Sufficiency of disclosure

(Clifford Chance)/ /1 Comment

A judgment of 7 July 2021 from the Spanish Supreme Court has been published, which, as discussed below, following the case law from the EPO’s Boards of Appeal, introduces certain guidelines for assessing whether or not an invention is sufficiently described. The background of the case can be summarized as follows: The complainant filed a…

Patents, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

In our blog of 27 August 2021, we explained that the Barcelona Appeal Court (Section 15), in a very interesting Ruling of 16 October 2020, decided that the claims as amended before the EPO Boards of Appeal should become the subject of the national proceedings in lieu of the claims asserted in the initial infringement…