The federal district court in Wilmington, Delaware, did not err in finding that several claims of a patent for preparing a stable formulation of the antibiotic compound ertapenem owned by Merck Sharp & Dohme were invalid as obvious, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. Substantial record evidence supported the district…
During the past decade, Spanish courts have debated the impact of the TRIPS Agreement (“TRIPS”) on patents the applications of which were filed before 7 October 1992, that is, before Spain’s Reservation under Article 167 of the European Patent Convention (“EPC”) expired. According to this Reservation, European patents would not have any effects in Spain,…
In a Judgment dated 12 June 2013, the Spanish Supreme Court confirmed that it was possible to discriminate between different objective technical problems within the same set of claims. Accordingly, an independent claim may be found to be obvious, and yet one of its dependent claims could still be deemed valid, provided that it claimed…
On 24 November 2016, the Court of Appeal of Barcelona (Section 15) handed down a judgment in which it confirmed that “the interpretation of the scope of protection of a patent for the purposes of analysing its validity cannot be different from when its infringement is analysed”. The Judges also highlighted the relevance of the…
In a dispute between patent holder B/E Aerospace and C&D Zodiac that was instituted by C&D’s petition for inter partes review of B/E’s patent for saving space in airplanes, the Patent trail and Appeal Board did not err in concluding that claims 1, 3–7, 9, 10, 12–14, 16–19, 21, 22, 24–29, 31, and 33–37 of…
For the first time, the Spanish Supreme Court made far-reaching observations on key issues of the assessment of inventive step and, in particular, on a) the reformulation of the “objective technical problem” as defined in the patent’s specification, b) the limits to the combination of prior art documents and c) the professional qualifications required for…
Beamocular brought proceedings against C-Rad, alleging that Beamocular had the superior right to an Invention made by K.M. who was at the time an employee of C-Rad. The Swedish Patent and Market Court of Appeals confirmed that the primary work duties of K.M. did not constitute research activities and therefore the Invention was not a…
In this case the Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) allowed a compulsory licence under a patent for a pharmaceutical active ingredient for the first time ever. The Court held that a public interest in such a licence may still exist where it concerns only a small group of patients. In particular, the interest may be…
Following inter partes review of several claims of a patent directed to a trigger/seal mechanism for a beverage container, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board properly applied the broadest reasonable in construing a connection limitation disclosed in the challenged claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has decided. The Board’s construction was…
For many years, Spanish Courts have considered the “problem & solution approach” developed by the European Patent Office (“EPO”) to be a very useful tool for the purpose of trying to make an objective assessment of inventive activity. Unlike in other jurisdictions such as Germany, in Spain this method has become the natural instrument used…
