The FCJ decided that submissions by the parties which are expressly intended for the court only and not for the opposing party may not be included in the court file. As a consequence, they may not be relied on by the court and may not be disclosed to the opposing party for the purposes of…
St. Jude Medical failed to show that challenged claims of patent owned by Snyders had been anticipated by other patents, nor did it prove that a particular combination demonstrated obviousness. Claims of a patent directed to an artificial heart valve manufactured by Snyders Heart Valve LLC and a system for inserting the valve were not…
Joining the majority of European courts, the Paris Court of Justice ruled that Eli Lilly’s patent, which relates to the combined administration of pemetrexed disodium and vitamin B12, was infringed by the marketing of Fresenius’ pemetrexed diacid. It also awarded a record amount of damages of €28,000,000: a first in Europe. 1. The pemetrexed “saga”…
If an appeal against a decision of the opposition division to maintain the patent in amended form is filed by both patentee and opponent, but later one of the appeals is withdrawn, the principle of reformatio in peius is still applicable, even if more limiting auxiliary claim sets have been filed by the patentee. Case…
The use of a generally available tool (here: reverse sandwich assays) can involve an inventive step if the advantages pursued and provided by the invention do not materialize without further effort and if the skilled person would not have found (sufficient) motivation in the state of the art to consider that this tool was suitable…
PTAB did not err in its claim construction or obviousness findings in two IPRs filed by Westinghouse that challenged two Siemens patents. Substantial evidence supported two Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions following inter partes review of two related patents directed toward methods and systems for automatically activating a train warning device, including a horn,…
The Supreme Administrative Court held that the publication of an application for a European patent that included the description of an industrial design in the relevant journal before the protection for such design was requested meant that the relevant design had been made available to the public and thus was not eligible for registration. With…
The Court of appeal of Paris, in a decision on the merits, has ruled that the SPC covering the combination of ezetimibe and simvastatine is invalid. The decision was rendered on September 25, 2020, in a case opposing Merck and Teva (free translation available here).This is the first decision in Europe on the merits to…
The FCJ confirmed that the costs of the participation of a European Patent Attorney (Professional Representative before the EPO) in a patent case before the German civil courts are always recoverable from the losing party pursuant to sec. 143 (3) Patent Act. Case date: 14 April 2020 Case number: X ZB 2/18 (ECLI:DE:BGH:2020:140420BXZB2.18.0) Court: Federal…
This month the Mannheim Regional Court released a decision (here) in the dispute between Daimler AG, owner of the famous Mercedes-Benz brand, and the Finnish company Nokia (also see our previous post on this blog (Another CJEU ruling on standard-essential patents and FRAND looks inevitable). The controversy centred on Nokia’s European Patent EP2981103, which the German…
