In Italy, legislation to adapt the patent system to the Unitary Patent will enter into force on 27 March 2019. This means legislative preparations in Italy for the start of the UP and UPC have been completed. The Legislative Decree of 19 February 2019 to incorporate the provisions of the Unitary Patent Regulation (EU 1257/2012)…
On 4 March 2019, we uploaded a post noting that the English Patents Court had decided to refer a question to the CJEU on whether it was permissible for a patentee to rely on a third party’s MA to obtain an SPC in the absence of consent from that third party. We briefly summarised the…
On Friday 1 March 2019, Arnold J handed down his judgment in the patent dispute between Eli Lilly and Genentech regarding IL-17A/F antibodies*1. This lengthy judgment, which as the Judge observed: “was one of most complex patent cases I have ever tried”, is littered with interesting legal points. However, to many life sciences patent lawyers,…
Today, in the decision T 0489/14 the EPO’s Boards of Appeal published their referral of three questions relating to computer implemented simulations to the Enlarged Board of Appeal. Referrals to the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal do not come around often, referrals in the area of computer technology even less so. The purpose of referrals…
One has to have a lot of courage to accept the task of coordinating a book on Supplementary Protection Certificates (“SPCs”). The immense variety of the facts discussed in the numerous cases that have historically sparked the need for preliminary questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) on the interpretation of…
The fundamental question which types of products are amenable to SPC protection and which types of marketing authorizations allow the filing of SPCs has aroused much controversy in Europe, and reached a climax when the CJEU in its judgment Boston Scientific (C-527/17) of 25 October 2018 denied the grant of SPCs on the basis of…
The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (BVerfG) intends to decide on the complaint against German ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement this year. The case (2 BvR 739/17) is on the 2019 decision list, which was published yesterday. It doesn’t come as a surprise. The UPCA case was on the 2018 list as well,…
The introduction of an SPC manufacturing waiver in the European Union is now all but a done deal. Following the European Commission’s initial proposal for a regulation amending Regulation (EC) 469/2009 on SPCs for medicinal products (COM(2018) 317 final) issued on 28 May 2018, the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) adopted its final…
Visser’s Annotated Patent Convention, the 2018 Edition, previously known as the Annotated European Patent Convention, was published on 15 December 2018. The new 2018 edition of this preeminent work – the only regularly updated authoritative article-by-article commentary in English on the European Patent Convention (EPC), its implementing regulations, and associated case law – provides the complete text of the…
This recent decision from an EPO Board of Appeal is a rather satisfying development in how patentability (especially novelty) of purity claims is assessed at the EPO. This case may be seen as patentee-friendly, particularly for the pharmaceutical sector, as it likely extends protection for APIs. It will become especially important to review this case…
