Over the last few years, highly detailed discussions on patent validity have been a staple of Spanish preliminary injunction proceedings. The influential Barcelona Court of Appeal now clarifies that, while validity may be discussed, the analysis should not reach the same level of depth as in the main proceedings. Furthermore, a defendant wishing to object…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has vacated and remanded a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision that a reference guide qualified as a printed publication, in a case involving reexamination of medical device patents relating to access ports, asking for the Board to clarify its findings on this matter. Further, the…
The Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal filed by Cubist against the Patents Court decision that one of its patents relating to antibiotic daptomycin was invalid for obviousness. The Court of Appeal was satisfied that the first instance Judge had an ample evidential basis to find the claimed invention obvious, his finding was properly reasoned…
The FCJ held that when inventive step is assessed, for each feature of the assessed claim which is not disclosed, i.e. directly and unambiguously derivable, to be considered obvious, an incentive for the skilled person to particularly choose this feature rather than an alternative would need to be proven or at least plausible. Case date: 05…
The Court of Appeal decided to stay appeal proceedings and refer a question to the CJEU concerning the circumstances in which an active ingredient that is a member of a class of compounds which fall within a Markush definition in a claim of a patent would be deemed ‘protected’ by the patent within the meaning…
The FCJ confirmed that, when formulating the problem as a starting point for assessing inventive step, it is not permissible to narrow the problem by referring to prior art not cited in the patent. The patent relates to a sound generator, in particular for parking assistance systems for vehicles. The sound generator is equipped with…
A catalog published at a trade conference by one of the inventors of U.S. Patent 8,714,977 (the “’977 patent) was publicly accessible to the dental industry in March 2003, and therefore was prior art, with properly corroborated evidence, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in a precedential opinion. The Federal…
This case concerns the question of whether, and under what conditions, a supplier of infringing products who is located abroad can be held liable for infringement of the German patent for acts committed abroad. The FCJ held that the supplier may be liable if he was aware or should have been aware of the fact…
One of the points sometimes debated in patent cases is the date when a claim for patent infringement becomes “time-barred” (i.e. the date on which it “prescribes”). The traditional position adopted by the courts in countries like Germany and Spain is that in the case of continuing acts of infringement, the time-barred period (e.g. 5…
To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the top 3 most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the top posts from June, July and August. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
