In preliminary injunction proceedings, the influential Barcelona Court of Appeal held that reasons of “congruence” bind the court to basing the assessment of inventive step strictly on the particular prior art document chosen as the closest prior art by the party challenging its validity, regardless of whether that choice is technically and objectively justified. This…
The Federal Court of Justice confirmed that a nullity defendant can defend its patent to a limited extent only insofar as it is attacked by the nullity plaintiff. The limited defence of the patent in dispute by combining an attacked claim with an uncontested subclaim or with one of several variants of an uncontested subclaim…
In an extraordinary appeal pursuant to Sec. 321a of the German Civil Procedure Code, the FCJ confirmed that the courts are obliged to take note of and consider the actual and legal submissions of the parties to the proceedings. The constitutionally guaranteed right to be heard (Art. 103 para. 1 Basic Law) is intended to…
The federal district court in Chicago did not err in dismissing a patent infringement suit filed by Maxon, LLC against several smart television manufacturers on the ground that the asserted patents—describing an electronic means of increasing user control over subscription entertainment content for smart TVs—were invalid as directed to an abstract idea that lacked an…
The Federal Court of Justice held that the fact that all of the embodiment examples in an application comprise a specific feature stands in the way of claiming protection for embodiments without this feature, if it can be derived from the content of the application that the means provided in the claim serve to solve…
Wise readers will know that when it comes to matters of the heart, it is often best not to interfere. Indeed, the Court of Appeal in its recent judgment in Edwards Lifesciences v Boston Scientific [2018] EWCA Civ 673, decided not to interfere with HHJ Hacon’s judgment that of the two patents in suit relating…
Two final decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board—each finding that certain apparatus claims of a wireless communication network owned by DSS Technology Management were invalid as obvious—have been reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, because the Board failed to provide a sufficient explanation for its findings, and a…
Around this time last year, in Edwards Lifesciences v Boston Scientific [2017], His Honour Judge Hacon (sitting as a High Court Judge) had the opportunity to analyse two interesting aspects of UK patent law: (i) the law of implied disclosures and anticipation; and (ii) the importance of so-called secondary evidence in the evaluation of inventive…
The French National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) has just dispelled doubts by means of an official statement( https://www.inpi.fr/fr/nationales/communique-relatif-au-calcul-de-la-date-d-expiration-des-certificats-complementaires-de-protection ) it is now possible for holders of a supplementary protection certificate (SPC), issued in France before October 6, 2015, to require extension of their protection duration. The conditions are simple: (1) the SPC shall still be in…
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board correctly determined that all 79 claims of a patent related to a computerized method for identifying and substituting information in an electronic document were invalid for obviousness, the Federal Circuit has held. Although the Board erred in its analysis by declining to apply a prosecution disclaimer limiting the patent’s…
