A number of recent decisions have highlighted the risks that can arise from the practice of supplying draft judgments to litigants and their advisers under an embargo. The courts have made it clear that a breach of embargo is to be treated seriously, and failure to comply with an embargo may result in proceedings for…
“Jamais deux sans trois”. The French Supreme Court (“Cour de Cassation”) has issued no less than seven decisions relating to SPCs on February 1st, 2023. After having reported the two relating to the interpretation of article 3 a) of the SPC Regulation last week (nivolumab and pembrolizumab cases), I will report today a decision rendered…
In two decisions rendered on February 1st, 2023, the French Supreme Court (“Cour de cassation”) overturned the decisions of the Paris Court of Appeal which had confirmed the rejections by the French PTO (“INPI”) of the supplementary protection certificate (“SPC”) applications for nivolumab and pembrolizumab. On this occasion, the Supreme Court clarified the interpretation of…
In two decisions rendered on January 11, 2023, the French Supreme Court (“Cour de cassation”) ruled for the third time in almost 50 years on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. As we will see, in doing so the Supreme Court seems to follow the “Hitachi” approach used at the European Patent Office in this field….
Damages enquiries in patent cases rarely make it to trial, let alone to the Court of Appeal, so this judgment provides important guidance on the assessment of damages for patent (and by extension other IP rights) infringement. Background Anan Kasei is the proprietor of a patent to high surface area cerium oxide, a catalyst…
In the present preliminary case a cross-border injunction was ordered by the provisions judge. He came to this conclusion because he found the product to be infringing (in contrast to a preliminary decision of the Greek court) and he found that the Dutch-based Pharmathen company was controlling the other companies in the group. Case date: 19…
Because prior art described a method that could execute an application on one computer server, it should have been obvious that the method could be applied to multiple servers. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board erred when it found that several claims of a patent describing the remote application of a computer application were not…
On July 20, 2022, the Japan Intellectual Property High Court (“IP High Court”) rendered the first-ever decision allowing enforcement of Japanese patent rights against infringing acts partially committed outside of Japan (Case No. 2018 (Ne) 10077). The plaintiff Dwango Co., Ltd. sued co-defendants FC2, Inc. (U.S. company) and Homepage System, Inc. (Japanese company), alleging that…
This decision dealt with the practically important question of whether the claim can still be waived in the proceedings on the complaint against denial of leave to appeal, i.e. after the conclusion of the appeal proceedings. This becomes particularly relevant if the patent in suit is held invalid and the opposing party does not agree…
The claimed methods of filtering, highlighting, and selecting portions of maps or other visual information for display had long been done by hand, and the claims failed to describe specific technological improvements making them patent-eligible. Two IBM software patents related to graphical display technology were invalid for claiming ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. §…
