The Paris District Court clarified its interpretation of Article 123 EPC regarding disclaimer allowability and allowed a disclaimer restoring novelty of a patent. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.Kluweriplaw.com .
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…
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…
The Court held that a decision by the EPO relating to the UK designation was not capable of challenge. In any event, the procedure chosen by the claimant to challenge the decision (an application to correct the UKIPO register based on Rule 50 of the Patents Rules 2007) was wrong, because it required the consent…
A composition obtainable on the market is at least not then novel if the composition can be analyzed and reproduced by a skilled person without undue burden. For this purpose, it is sufficient for a complex com¬po-sition that is not easily identifiable, if the skilled person can establish a manageable number of hypotheses on the…
The High Court (Arnold J.) decided to refer further questions on the interpretation of Article 3 of the SPC Regulation to the CJEU,, particularly in relation to the Article 3(a) requirement that “the product is protected by a basic patent in force”, suggesting an interpretation which focuses on the “inventive concept” of the patent rather…
The Court of Appeal held that while structural approaches for determining obviousness (with reference to the Pozzoli test), are useful, the importance of the statutory test cannot be undermined. The ultimate question that the Court must address is whether it was obvious to the skilled but unimaginative addressee to make a product or carry out…
The Court of Appeal of Liège confirmed the President of the Commercial Court’s finding that the appellant had committed patent infringement, and ordered the reimbursement of costs of the saisie-contrefaçon (seizure of evidence), which were not considered damages but as procedural costs. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this case…
The Supreme Court held that claiming priority of an earlier application requires a direct and unambiguous disclosure in the priority document of all features of the technical teaching as defined in the claims. If the claimed invention is characterized by a particular property of one of its components that has not (clearly) been disclosed in…
In an appeal against a decision by the Opposition Division to maintain the patent in amended form, the Board ordered the representative of the opponent to file an authorization. The representative did not do so in due time, but indicated that the opponent would take no further action. The Board held that the legal fiction…
