European Union, UPC

(Véron & Associés)/

Pierre Véron is attorney-at-law at Véron & Associés, Paris, Honorary President of the European Patent Lawyers Association (EPLAW), Member of the Drafting Committee of the Rules of Procedure and Member of the Expert Panel of the Unified Patent Court. On 10 January2015, Regulation (EU) № 542/2014 of 15 May 2014 entered into force simultaneously with Regulation (EU) № 1215/2012, the…

Amendments, Chemical Engineering, Extension of subject matter, Extent of Protection, France, Scope of protection

(Véron & Associés)/

Syngenta Limited (hereinafter referred to as “Syngenta”), a company governed by the laws of England and Wales, is the holder of European patent No. 0 382 375 entitled “Fungicides”. On 28 September 2009, it submitted to the Institut national de la propriété industrielle (INPI; French Industrial Property Office) a request for limitation of a claim of the French designation of…

(Indirect) infringement, Chemical Engineering, France, Procedure

(Véron & Associés)/

The French saisie-contrefaçon is known to be an extremely powerful and effective tool to collect evidence of infringement of a patent (as of any other intellectual property right, see “Saisie-contrefaçon” on Wikipedia and also P. Véron et alii, Saisie-contrefaçon, Paris, Dalloz Action, 3rd ed. 2013-2014). It is a procedure that allows to request and obtain from…

(Indirect) infringement, Chemical Engineering, France, Injunction, SPC

(Véron & Associés)/

On 15 January 2013, the French Cour de cassation, in the litigation between the Novartis companies and the Actavis companies about valsartan, drew the consequences of the 9 February 2012 order rendered by the CJEU in the frame of a parallel litigation in the United Kingdom. As already explained in a previous post, the company governed by the laws…

(Indirect) infringement, France, Injunction, Procedure, SPC

(Véron & Associés)/

Faithfully implementing Article 9 §4 of Directive No. 2004/48/EC, Arti-cle L. 615–3 of the French Intellectual Property Code (hereinafter referred to as “IPC”) authorizes French courts to grant an interim injunction order after an inter partes proceedings (before the Judge ruling in preliminary proceedings) but also after an ex parte proceedings. As required by the EC Directive, the ex parte…

Damages, Enforcement, France, Injunction, Procedure

(Véron & Associés)/

Thanks to the constitutional revision of 23 July 2008 (which created Article 61-1 and amended Article 62 of the French Constitution), a new procedure to control the constitutionality of laws was introduced into French law, which came into force on 1st March 2010: the “priority question on constitutionality” (“question prioritaire de constitutionnalité”). Before this reform, the constitutionality could only be verified…

European Union, France, Injunction, Procedure, SPC

(Véron & Associés)/

On 8 June 2012, the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris rendered an interesting decision concerning Losartan. It particularly deals with two questions: the conditions of the SPC’s paediatric extension (Regulation (EC) No. 1901/2006) and the preliminary injunction as organized by Article L. 615-3 (implementing Article 9 of Directive (EC) No. 2004/48) of the French Intellectual Property Code. The US company E.I….

(Indirect) infringement, Chemical Engineering, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, France, Inventive step, Novelty, Revocation, Second Medical Use, Sufficiency of disclosure, Validity

(Véron & Associés)/

On 20 March 2012, the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris rendered its decision in the case relating to raloxifene, a molecule useful for treating or preventing osteoporosis in post-menopausal women, opposing Teva to Eli Lilly. This decision raises many questions, first concerning drug patents in particular (patentability of second medical use, patentability of the resolution of…