Case Law

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Enforcement, Exceptions to patentability, Inventive step, Novelty, Prior use right, Sweden

(Bird & Bird)/

The Stockholm District Court held the Swedish part of a European patent concerning a method of growing two or more plants invalid, due to lack of inventive step. Despite requests for limitations by the proprietor the patent was declared invalid in its entirety. Infringement, exceptions to patentability and prior use rights were also considered by…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Extent of Protection, Inventive step, Procedure, Sweden, Validity

(Bird & Bird)/

In a combined patent infringement and nullity case, the Svea Court of Appeal upheld the validity of Roche Diagnostics’ European patent as far as Sweden was concerned, but held, other than the District Court, that the alleged infringer did not infringe the patent at issue. The Court of Appeal further held that a patent can…

(Cross-border) jurisdiction, (Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Enforcement, Injunction, Inventive step, Netherlands

(Brinkhof)/

The PI judge in the District Court of The Hague held that under certain circumstances, provisional cross-border jurisdiction can be derived from art. 31 Regulation (EC) 44/2001, which would require a “real connecting link” between the sought measures and the jurisdiction of a contracting state (ECJ C-391/95, Van Uden/Decoline). However, in the present case there…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Equivalents, Extent of Protection, Netherlands

(Brinkhof)/

The PI judge in the District Court of The Hague held that the processes used to manufacture the generic products in dispute did not fall within the invoked patents’ scope of protection, and particularly that these did not comprise equivalent measures, because the allegedly equivalent substances had significantly different chemical compositions and functionality. Finding the…

Case Law, Damages, Enforcement, Netherlands, Procedure, Revocation

(Brinkhof)/

The Court of Appeal held that the duty to compensate the successful party’s legal costs in intellectual property proceedings, pursuant to Art. 14 of the Enforcement directive, also applies to invalidity claims, counterclaims and defenses by the alleged infringing party threatened with patent enforcement. To deny such compensation in respect of nullity claims or defenses…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Extension of subject matter, Procedure

(V.O.)/

The Board of Appeal ruled that color figures contained in the application when filed could be used as a basis for amendments. The board had to deal with the problem that no original copy of the color figures was available to the board. Therefore, the board considered it appropriate to compare sets of copies of…

Biologics, Case Law, EPC, Inventive step

(Vereenigde)/

In order to determine whether the features that distinguish the patent claims over the prior art can be considered when assessing inventive ste p and novelty, the Board must consider whether these features make a technical contribution to the invention. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this case will be…

Case Law, France, Procedure

(Pinsent Masons)/

The Paris Court of Appeal clarified the interest of a potential competitor to seek the revocation of a patent. It was particularly unclear whether any competitor, current or potential, could have a legitimate interest in the form of a “clear the path” approach. However, in this case the Court held that Omnipharm had no legitimate…

Case Law, Enforcement, Procedure, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

Spain adopted the optional clause in Article 65 of the EPC, which requires a translation of the patent filed with the national patent office within 3 months of publication of the patent by EPO. The Supreme Court decided that this term starts on the date of publication of the announcement of the granting of the…