In July 2023, the Japanese electronics company Panasonic initiated a series of patent infringement and FRAND-related proceedings against several subsidiaries of the Chinese consumer electronics maker Oppo (and in parallel against another Chinese company, i.e. Xiaomi), at the local divisions of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) in Mannheim and Munich (*). Panasonic’s suit targeted Oppo…
The eagerly awaited CJEU decision on the two joined referrals Teva v. MSD (C-119/22) and MSD v. Clonmel (C-149/22) relating to SPCs for combination products was handed down today on December 19, 2024. The two referrals arose from national litigation involving SPCs for a combination of active ingredients, i.e., the combination of sitagliptin and metformin…
As we are approaching the holiday season, Sweden has a special gift for SPC applicants and proprietors. This comes in the wake of the recent decision PMÄ 7804-24 of November 11, 2024, in which the Swedish Patent and Market Court endorsed a change of practice regarding the manner in which the SPC term is calculated….
When interpreting a patent claim, the person skilled in the art does not apply a philological understanding, but rather determines the technical meaning of the terms used with the aid of the description and the drawings. From the function of the individual features in the context of the patent claim as a whole, it must…
In a second case between DexCom and Abbott, DexCom claimed against Abbott for infringement of a divisional patent by its glucose monitoring system. However, Abbott, in a similar fashion as with the parent patent, also counterclaimed for revocation of the divisional patent. Case date: 31 July 2024 Case number: CFI 233/2023547520/20232178/2024 Court: UPC Local divisions of the…
In a long awaited, but timely decision the Düsseldorf local division has the honour to be the first to decide an infringement case before the UPC. Indeed, the court lived up to its promise to deliver a decision in about 1 year. The decision itself, where the patent was found invalid, but an auxiliary request…
Following up on Thorsten’s blog post yesterday, I report on the second day of the Oxviews 9th Intellectual Property and Competition Forum, which took place in the Justizpalast in Munich on 19 June. This impressive building deserves the name Palast (in English “Palace”), and was a fitting venue for this meeting of thought leaders in…
As most readers will be well aware, one of the hottest topics in the patent world is the broadening of the Bolar provision envisaged in the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Union code relating to medicinal products for human use, and repealing Directive 2001/83/EC and Directive…
Proceedings on the merits and proceedings on provisional measures may be lodged separately before the UPC, but it may also be the case that as part of the infringement case provisional measures are requested. In such a case before the Helsinki local division the first instance court held that the UPC was not competent (see…
There are now three interesting developments, albeit in quite different areas, which have in common the effort to avoid stepping on banana skins on the path towards a more unified patent system. The first one, published last week, was a decision by the Court of Appeal (CoA) itself, which took the opportunity to clarify that…
