Case Law

Case Law, Enforcement, Infringement, Litigation, Patents, Procedure, Revocation, Sufficiency of disclosure, United Kingdom, Validity

(Bristows)/

On 9 October 2019, the Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal against the finding that a patent directed towards ceramic compounds was sufficient and allowed two procedural appeals on issues of liability. Anan Kasei and Rhodia (“Rhodia”) are respectively the proprietor and exclusive licensee of a patent for ceric oxide compounds for use in catalytic…

Case Law, France, Trade secrets

, (August Debouzy)/ /1 Comment

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…

Case Law, United States of America

(Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US)/

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…

Case Law, Netherlands, Novelty, Prior art

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

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…

Case Law, Infringement, Turkey

(Gün + Partners)/ /2 Comments

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…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Germany, Infringement, Litigation, Prior use right

(Rospatt Osten Pross )/

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…

Case Law, Netherlands

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

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…

Case Law, CJEU, European Union, Pharma, SPC, United Kingdom

, (Vossius & Partner)/

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,…

Case Law, CJEU, European Union, Patents, Pharma, SPC

, (Vossius & Partner)/ /1 Comment

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…