EPC Archives - Page 15 of 31 - Kluwer Patent Blog

The Difficult Interface between Opposition Proceedings before the EPO and parallel national proceedings: will the new Spanish Patent Act shed some light?

Miquel Montañá (Clifford Chance)/September 4, 2015

One of the tricky consequences of Article 64 of the European Patent Convention (“EPC”), which establishes that the European patent is immediately enforceable after its publication, and Article 99, which provides for “post-grant” oppositions, is that quite often the combination of these two articles fuels two trains that run in parallel where the validity of…

Case Law, EPC, EPO Decision

EPO: J12/14, European Patent Office, Board of Appeal, 27 March 2015

Lars de Haas (V.O.)/August 19, 2015October 23, 2018

The board refused to apply Rule 56 EPC (filing missing drawings) to allow replacement of a poor quality drawing in a patent application by a drawing from the priority document. Although J2/12 had allowed replacement under Rule 56 in the case that it could be established that wrong drawings were filed, this applied only to…

Case Law, EPC, Netherlands

The Netherlands: A v. Arca, District Court of The Hague, C/09/466982, 4 February 2015

Rien Broekstra (Brinkhof)/July 22, 2015

Competence of the Dutch courts is determined solely based on facts furnished by plaintiff. Jurisdiction for patent entitlement claims is governed by the Protocol on Recognition to the EPC, not by the Brussels I Regulation. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.

EPC

Finally, More Clarity from the Boards of Appeal of the EPO

Thorsten Bausch (Hoffmann Eitle)/July 14, 2015March 18, 2017 /1 Comment

No, not what you might perhaps have hoped for. A lot is currently ongoing at the European Patent Office about the status, the independence, the future location and the (self-)administration of the EPO’s Boards of Appeal, but this blogger is neither sufficiently well-informed nor competent to comment on the big picture. So let’s stick to…

Countries, EPC, Exceptions to patentability, Germany

Germany: The provision of information as a technical teaching? (Federal Court of Justice, “Bildstrom”)

Thomas Musmann (Rospatt Osten Pross)/June 10, 2015March 18, 2017

The German Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice, FCJ) has issued the decision “Bildstrom” (judgment of 26 February 2015, docket no. X ZR 37/13) dealing with the patentability of a system and a method for displaying an image stream. The attacked patent EP 1474927 concerns a technical teaching for displaying an image stream, wherein at least…

Case Law, EPC, EPO Decision, European Union

EPO: T 1756/11, European Patent Office (EPO), Board of Appeal, T 1756/11, 14 January 2015

Lars de Haas (V.O.)/June 9, 2015October 23, 2018

An EPO board held that observations filed by third parties during inter parte appeal must be disregarded by the board, unless they concern amendments during opposition or appeal, in which case the board had discretion whether or not to consider the observations in the examination of the amendments. Also when a party to the appeal…

Case Law, EPC, European Union

EPO: R2/14, European Patent Office, Enlarged Board of Appeal, ECLI:EP:BA:2015:R000214.20150217, 17 February 2015

Lars de Haas (V.O.)/May 27, 2015

A panel of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO rejected a request to replace the EBA chairman for suspected partiality. The reasons for allowing such a request in decision R19/12 had since been removed because the chairman had discontinued all his managerial activities in the senior management committees of the EPO. Under…

EPC, European Union, Unitary Patent

New EPO proposals for renewal fees Unitary Patent: will SMEs kill innovation?

Pieter Callens (Eubelius)/May 25, 2015 /1 Comment

In March 2015 the European Patent Office presented two proposals to the Select Committee for the level of renewal fees of the future Unitary Patent. The proposals were presented as the “Top 4” and “Top 5” models, i.e. equivalent to the national renewal fees of the 4, respectively 5 Member States where European patents are…

Added matter, Amendments, Disclaimer, EPC, Novelty

T 2130/11 or how to escape the added matter – clarity trap for disclaimers

Thorsten Bausch (Hoffmann Eitle)/May 18, 2015March 18, 2017

In T 2130/11 the Board held that a disclaimer removing more than strictly necessary to restore novelty would not be in contradiction with the spirit of G 1/03 if it was required to satisfy Article 84 EPC and it did not lead to an arbitrary reshaping of the claims.

EPC, European Union, Spain, Unitary Patent, UPC

Boost for Unitary Patent Package: CJEU dismisses Spanish challenge

Kluwer Patent blogger/May 5, 2015

The European Court of Justice (CJEU) has just rejected Spain’s challenge of the Regulations No 1260/2012 and No 1257/2012. The eagerly awaited decision in the cases C-146/13 and C-147/13, implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection, means an important obstacle for the creation of the Unified Patent Court and the Unitary…