The transposition of the “trade secrets” directive in France allowed the introduction of new legal tools that apply to ex parte investigation measures and infringement seizures (“saisie-contrefaçon”). We propose here a panorama of the first decisions in this area. When it transposed the so-called “Trade Secrets” Directive (EU) 2016/943 of 8 June 2016, French Law…
The Board properly found that a person skilled in the art would not be motivated to combine two prior art references and that industry praise supported a finding of nonbviousness. Substantial evidence supported the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s determination following inter partes review that a patent owned by Frymaster LLC for measuring cooking oil…
A claim defining a compound as having a certain purity would lack novelty over a prior art disclosure describing the same compound only if the prior art disclosed the claimed purity at least implicitly, for example by way of a method for preparing said compound, the method inevitably resulting in the claimed purity. Such a…
As per Article 154 of the Turkish IP Law any person who has a legal interest can file an action to have the Court determine that his acts do not constitute an infringement of the intellectual property rights of a rights owner. For a quite long time patent owners were squeezed between conflicting approaches in…
The Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice, BGH) clarified the scope and limits of a prior use right of a manufacturer and supplier of components of a patented device (BGH, judgment of 14 May 2019, X ZR 95/18 – Schutzverkleidung). Under German patent law, a patent has no effect with respect to a party who…
A request for re-establishment should be filed within two months of the date of removal of non-compliance. This date may be the date on which the applicant became aware of the missed due date, even if the professional representative did receive the EPO communications mentioning the failure to comply with the deadline. Case date: 18 June…
One of the features that render the European Union’s Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) unique in comparison to similar legal instruments in other jurisdictions, including the United States and Japan, is that there is no legal provision expressly calling for any specific relationship or agreement between the patent proprietor (and SPC applicant) on the one hand,…
In the field of supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) in the European Union, the majority of all CJEU referrals resolved to date have dealt with the interpretation of the – presumably simple – condition that an SPC can only be granted for an active ingredient (or a combination of active ingredients) that is “protected” by the…
The PTAB improperly found that the patent is unpatentable in view of the prior art. Concluding that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board improperly construed certain claims in a patent for memory system circuits owned by Innovative Memory Systems, Inc. in an inter partes review filed by Micron Technology, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals…
Cases in which FRAND licences are discussed, and where if no licence is taken an injunction is requested, more closely resemble unpaid debt claims then IP-related cases and are thus less suitable for preliminary proceedings. Further, the fact that the case was complex, not only in relation to the patented subject-matter but also because of…
