Case Law

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Equivalents, Extent of Protection, Netherlands, Scope of protection

(Brinkhof)/

The District Court of The Hague holds that in case of ambiguities in the claim language the skilled man will consult the prosecution history to determine the scope of protection. The patent can not be construed in such manner that it would lack novelty over prior art from which the patent was explicitly delimited during…

Case Law, Extent of Protection, Injunction, Scope of protection, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

In this case the Commercial Court lifts an ex parte preliminary injunction against the launch of several generics of Pramipexol after an inter partes hearing. The ex parte decision was grounded on a Supplementary Protection Certificate based on a patent granted under the 1929 Patents Act. One of the claims of the patent was construed…

(Cross-border) jurisdiction, (Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Equivalents, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

The Barcelona Court of Appeal found that the process used by the defendants to obtain amlodipine was not equivalent to the process protected by the patent in suit. The Court relied on the three Catnic questions test, applied by the English Courts until 2004, to come to this conclusion that the patent was not infringed…

Biologics, Case Law, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Industrial application, Opposition, Second Medical Use

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The Enlarged Board of Appeal answers three questions of law as follows: Question 1: Where it is already known to use a medicament to treat an illness, Article 54(5) EPC does not exclude that this medicament be patented for use in a different treatment by therapy of the same illness. Question 2: Such patenting is…

Amendments, Case Law, EPC

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The Enlarged Board of Appeal in reply to three questions of law submitted to it, concludes as follows: Question 1: When an international application is filed and published under the PCT in an official language of the EPO, it is not possible upon entry into the regional phase to file a translation of the application…

Case Law, Disclaimer, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Mechanical Engineering

(V.O.)/

1. The Enlarged Board of Appeal considered the meaning that is to be given to the exclusion of patents on methods for ‘treatment by surgery’ (Article 53(c) EPC). The current construction used by the boards and the EPO as any non-significant intervention on the structure of an organism by conservative procedures was found to be…

Biologics, Case Law, Industrial application, United Kingdom

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The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s judgment that HGS’ patent relating to a new protein called Neutrokine-α was invalid for lack of industrial application. The Court of Appeal agreed with the High Court’s determination that uses for Neutrokine-α disclosed in the patent were not plausible at the time the patent was filed as…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Equivalents, Mechanical Engineering, Netherlands

(Brinkhof)/

The District Court of The Hague held that Abbott does not infringe Medinol’s patent. According to the Court there is also no reason to accept infringement by equivalence, since the meander patterns in the infringing embodiment fulfill another function than the claimed ‘second meander patterns’ as further explained in the patent in suit. This means…

Biologics, Case Law, Inventive step, Novelty, United Kingdom, Validity

(Bristows)/

The case concerned the validity of a ‘selection patent’. The Court of Appeal held that there is no special approach to be adopted in determining the validity of selection patents and that UK law should be consistent with EPO jurisprudence. For novelty, a prior disclosure of a large class of compounds does not take away…

Biologics, Case Law, Exceptions to patentability, Germany

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The Federal Court of Justice presented the following questions to the European Court of Justice: 1. How should the term ‘human embryos’ in Article 6 para. 2 lit. c Directive 98/44 EC be understood? a) Are all development stages of human life from the fertilisation of an egg cell included or are additional conditions required…