The messy case law from the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) on supplementary protection certificates (“SPC”) that protect “combinations” of pharmaceutical products has left many patentees that relied in good faith on the criteria laid down by the CJEU in the judgment of 16 September 1999, Case C-392/97 (“Farmitalia”) with patents whose…
In decision T 373/12 of 2 April 2014 the Enlarged Board has been asked to decide on the extent to which the clarity of claims amended during opposition proceedings and opposition appeal proceedings can be challenged when the amendments are based on dependent claims as granted.
The board held that a document of speculative nature could not objectively be considered as a realistic starting point or the most promising springboard towards the claimed invention: the document was no more than a speculative review of what might be potentially feasible in the future and no concrete realization of the claimed type of…
The EPO Board of Appeal 3.2.06 decided on 20 February 2014 to refer the following question to the Enlarged Board of Appeal:
“Is an appeal inadmissible or not deemed to have been filed, if both the notice of appeal had been filed and the fee for appeal had been paid after the expiry of the appeal term pursuant to Art. 108, 1st sentence EPC?”
Article 123 (2) EPC and corresponding national provisions prohibit an applicant or patentee from amending a patent application or patent such that its subject-matter extends beyond the content of the application as originally filed. The statute is the same throughout Europe, but the practice is not always so. An issue where the Case Law of…
The Board of Appeal used its discretionary power to declare inadmissible an appeal based on the claims as granted after the proprietor had only defended amended claims before the opposition division. Even if this should not be construed as abandonment of the claims as granted, the request should not be admitted for reasons of procedural…
Different views from the EPO and Germany on the same case 1. Introduction Functional features in patent claims may provide protection not only for specific embodiments disclosed in the patent specification, but also for undisclosed (future) embodiments. A classic example is a claim of the format “An inhibitor of protein P for the treatment of…
The Board vacated reversed a decision that deletion of drawings amounted to an extension of protection. The opposition Opposition division Division had revoked the patent with the argument that the amendment generally had an impact on the extent of protection conferred by the European patent because the drawings would be used to resolve ambiguities in…
While the preparations for the future EU Patent Package are ongoing, it may be useful to familiarize oneself somewhat with some of the key options that the new patent system will offer to its users if and when it has been enacted. According to Art. 3 UPCA the future Unified Patent Court (UPC) will have…
This morning the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) added a new extravagant decision to the long list of odd judgments on intellectual property matters that during the last stages of negotiation of Regulation (EU) 1257/2012 (unitary patent protection) caused the European Union’s legislative bodies to remove the yet-to-come “unitary patent” from the reach of the…
