Amendments to a patent (application) are bound to strict rules under the European Patent Convention (EPC). According to Art. 123(2) of the EPC, a European patent (application) may not be amended in such a way that it contains subject-matter which extends beyond the content of the application as filed. Adding subject-matter which is not disclosed would give an applicant an unwarranted advantage and could be damaging to the legal security of third parties. (G 1/93, OJ 1994, 541) The ‘gold standard’ of the European Patent Office’s Board of Appeal is that any amendment can only be made within the limits of what a skilled person would derive directly and unambiguously, using common general knowledge, and seen objectively and relative to the date of filing, from the whole of the documents as filed (G 3/89, OJ 1993,117; G 11/91, OJ 1993, 125).
A recent decision from Joanna Smith J dealing with the costs of a withdrawn application in a case before the English Patents Court contains an important postscript and suggests that the rules in the Patents Court Guide regarding the lodging and filing of skeleton arguments need to be revisited. All English patent litigators, and many…
Divisional applications and pre-grant oppositions may be filed until the “end of the examination”. That is the wording of the Brazilian IP Statute (Law No. 9279/96, articles 26 and 31). Looks simple enough, but in the absence of a definition in the law of what constitutes the “end of the examination”, the BRPTO has been…
On 23 April 2024, the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in the appeal arising from the January 2023 decision of Meade J in AIM v Supponor [2023] EWHC 164 (Pat). AIM is the proprietor of EP (UK) 3 295 663, which relates to technology that allows TV broadcasters of live events to superimpose…
The Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office (BRPTO) has issued a new set of guidelines to clarify its recent regulations on amending patent claims during the appellate phase and help patent applicants adapt to the new policy. Last month, we published an article regarding the decision rendered by the President of the BRPTO on 12 December…
The BRPTO published on September 14 an invitation for interested parties to comment on a proposal to review the provisions of the Brazilian IP Statute regarding two relevant timeframes for patent owners filing applications in Brazil. The first concerns the term for requesting examination (currently 36 months from filing, per Section 33), and the second…
On 21 March 2023, Meade J gave a bumper judgment in the revocation action brought by Gilead in respect of two of NuCana’s patents from the same family (EP (UK) 2 955 190 and EP (UK) 3 904 365, the “Patents”), which relate to nucleoside analogues. Filling 102 pages, the judgment raises a number of…
Michael Tappin QC (sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court) It is common in English patent litigation for patentees to make an application to amend a patent post grant and in the course of litigation pursuant to section 75 of the Patents Act 1977 – for example in order to delete invalid claims…
On 15 to 17 December 2021 a three-day trial took place to determine preliminary issues in a second action brought by Neurim against Mylan in relation to patents protecting the product Circadin (“Neurim v Mylan 2021”). Meade J’s judgment (Neurim Pharmaceutical (1991) Limited and Anor v Generics (UK) Limited t/a Viatris and Anor [2022] EWHC…
On 15 October 2020 Meade J. handed down his first ever written judgment in his new role as a Judge of the High Court in MSD v Wyeth. The neutral citation for the case is [2020] EWHC 2636 (Pat) and a link to the judgment is found here. The Judge had heard the case back…
by Sabine Möhle, Klemens Stratmann and Thorsten Bausch Decision T 1621/16 of Technical Board of Appeal 3.3.06 deals with a patent concerning a liquid hand dishwashing detergent composition. In a broader context, T 1621/16 will be of interest for practitioners struggling with the allowability of amendments under Article 123(2) EPC based on multiple selections from…
