The recently released judgment in J1/24 (relating to EP 3660979B1), from the Legal Board of Appeal at the European Patent Office (EPO) is a divisive judgment, which could potentially have far-reaching implications. Existing legislation ignored/overturned by J1/24 The European Patent Convention is clear that a divisional application must be filed from a pending parent application,…
On 27 August 2024, the Munich Local Division awarded a preliminary injunction (‘PI’) in an action brought by Hand Held Products against Scandit for infringement of EP3866051 (“Mobile computer configured to read multiple decodable indicia”) in relation to Scandit’s ‘Data Capture SDK’ software (Order UPC_CFI_74/2024). The Court held that Scandit’s software development kit (SDK) more…
This is part II of an open letter directed to the President of the EPO in his capacity to give directions on the composition of Opposition Divisions. Article 19 EPC explicitly permits the Primary Examiner to be member of an Opposition Division. Many applicants and representatives, however, have a feeling of bias in favour of…
Following months of speculation, EPO Board of Appeal 3.2.01 yesterday issued decision T 439/22 referring questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal on the extent to which the description and drawings should be used in claim interpretation. The claim feature at issue was: “in which the aerosol-forming substrate comprises a gathered sheet”. The key…
It is well known that the EPO Boards of Appeal take a strict line on admissibility of new elements of the appeal case under Articles 12 and 13 RPBA. But if the request to hold new elements inadmissible is itself filed late, the admissibility of the inadmissibility request may be questioned, see e.g. T 500/16…
The Central Staff Committee (CSC) of the European Patent Office has published a paper on the activities of the Industry Patent Quality Charter, titled ‘50 years EPC – The EPO ignoring the skilled person’. The Industry Patent Quality Charter (IPQC) was started by Beat Weibel, chief IP Counsel at Siemens, in October 2022 out of…
The Unified Patent Court, what else? For the patent community 2023 was a historical year. After two decades of hard work and debates, but also delays, court cases, Brexits and other disappointments, the new European patent court finally opened its doors and the Unitary Patent saw the light of day. Unsurprisingly, the new patent system…
In decision T 438/19 Technical Board of Appeal 3.3.03 has ex officio (!) referred three questions of law to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (now handled as G 1/23) in order to resolve a perceived divergence in the case law. These questions concern the question whether and in how far a (commercial) product and technical…
The Italian Government has agreed with France and Germany to set up a branch of the central division of the Unified Patent Court in Milan. This has been announced by the Italian ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation. According to a press release, the agreement will be submitted to the other UP member states…
From the company name of an appellant alone it can generally not be derived that the appellant does not meet the conditions of Rule 6(4,5) EPC for payment of the reduced appeal fee. This applies even where a company name is well-known. Where it is not clear from the file at the end of the…
