Chemical engineering concerns designing processes to produce, transform and transport materials, beginning with experimentation in the laboratory followed by implementation of the technology in full-scale production. It is used in the field of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, electronic device fabrication and environmental engineering, among others.
During the past 9 months in Denmark, the pharmaceuticals manufacturer and patentee, H. Lundbeck A/S, has obtained two interlocutory injunctions in Denmark against wholesalers marketing generic versions of Escitalopram. In both cases H. Lundbeck A/S argued successfully that the patent-in-suit fulfilled the conditions of the Danish Patents Act § 64a (similar to the Art 35…
The District Court of The Hague granted Mundipharma a provisional injunction against Sandoz for infringement of its patent for a controlled release oxycodon formulation. The District Court suspended its decision on the validity and infringement of the patent in the main action until a final decision has been rendered in the opposition proceedings. The Court…
The Austrian Supreme Court decided that a patent owner is free to base an infringement action on a limited version of its claims, irrespectively of initiating formal limitation proceedings. An application for cost reimbursement by the Main Association of the Austrian Social Insurance Institutions, which contained a declaration of the price and the availability of…
The District Court of The Hague holds the Dutch part of Eli Lilly’s olanzapine patent and SPC invalid because the substance olanzapine has been directly and unambiguously disclosed in a prior art document. According to the Court, the person skilled in the art will immediately recognize the error and the correction for this error in…
The District Court of The Hague, Administrative Division, considers the granting of an SPC to a patent proprietor that does not possess a market authorization for a medicine protected by the patent, not to be in conformity with the purpose of the SPC Regulation on medicinal products (Regulation (EC) No. 469/2009). A full summary of…
After a fresh analysis in light of evidence provided by the complainant, the Barcelona Court of Appeal confirmed the novelty of Calcium Atorvastatin, as it had done in earlier judgments of 2007 and 2008. In addition, this is the first judgment in which the Court confirmed the inventive activity of this product. For its analysis…
The Antwerp Commercial Court dismissed Merck’s claim for injunctive relief against Teva, ruling that Teva’s montelukast-based generic medicines do not infringe Merck’s European patent (EP 0 737 186) with respect to an improved process for preparation of the active ingredient montelukast, either literally or by equivalents. A full summary of this case has been published…
The Commercial Court Number 4 of Barcelona found that although obtaining the price for generic versions of Calcium Atorvastatin by two Spanish companies from the Ministry of Health is not an act of infringement as such, the acts carried out by the defendants constituted a threat of infringement that justified a prohibition to enter the…
In view of the need for a consistent approach to interpretation of Council Regulation (EEC) 1768/92, the Court of Appeal has referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) questions on the meaning of the term ‘the first authorisation to place the product on the market’ in Article 13(1); in particular whether the first authorisation…
In this judgment the Barcelona Court of Appeal concluded that any ‘preparatory acts’ (for example, submitting samples) conducted prior to the introduction in Spain of the ‘Bolar Clause’, as required by Directive 2004/27, would have been already excluded from the realm of patent infringement by the Experimental Use Exception. The Court rejected a request to…
