The District Court of Turin rejected Merck’s requests for a preliminary injunction, finding lack of inventive step of the claimed co-formulation of dorzolamid and timolol based on a prima facie assessment following the problem solution approach of the EPO Boards of Appeal. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this…
The Supreme Court held that the patent claiming a device to be mounted on ovens used to industrially drain pasta was infringed by application of the doctrine of equivalence. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.KluwerIPCases.com
The Supreme Court revoked claims 1 to 4, and found claim 5 to be novel and inventive but not infringed, because the result of defendant’s machine was not obtained by the claimed means. The court sanctioned the appeal court’s decision that the doctrine of equivalence could not be applied. Click here for the full text of…
The High Court considered the extent to which a claim for damages in a patent infringement case could be extended at the damages inquiry stage. It found that whilst it is just and convenient to extend the inquiry to infringing acts of the same type as that on which the Court in the main action…
Regarding the interpretation of “offering for the purpose” (of making, using etc.) in the sense of Article 53(1)(b) Dutch Patent Act, the Supreme Court held that offering has to be construed broadly and is not restricted to offering for sale. The defendant submitted its generic product for listing in G-Standaard, the database for medicinal products…
The Board decided that the introduction of the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA) overruled prior case law on admission of new arguments not included in the grounds of appeal, as distinguished from new facts and evidence. The Board ruled that introduction of new arguments may violate Article 12(2) RPBA, which requires…
The objection raised by the opponent that the protected subject matter of a divisional application extends beyond the content of the parent application does not represent a “fresh ground for opposition”,. This bbecause in the present case i.c. the opposition division hadhas earlier raised an unrelated objection earlier, holdinstating that the patent based on the…
The board addressed the public availability of publications on the internet, holding that direct and unambiguous access of a document should be possible in order to become state of the art. A mere theoretical possibility of having access is not sufficient, nor is retrievability by a search engine per se. A safe test is that…
The board clarified the non-public status of e-mail correspondence. The opponent asserted an e-mail from a third party to the opponent as part of the state of the art. It was not in dispute that both the sender and the recipient were bound to secrecy. However, it was asserted that the e-mail should already be…
The Dutch Supreme Court held that Art. 69 EPC in conjunction with art. 1 Protocol for the application of Art. 69 EPC provides a guideline for the determination of the scope of protection. Other “viewpoints” are the essence of the invention and the inventive idea behind the wording of the claims as opposed to the…
