European Union

Enforcement, European Union

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

On 3 July 2012, the European Parliament adopted the Commission’s proposal for a new Regulation on “Customs Enforcement of Intellectual Property” (COM(2011)0285) at first reading. The document P7_TA(2012)0272, which proposes many amendments, is the provisional position of the EP subject to further negotiations. Between October and November 2012, representatives of the Commission, the Council and…

European Union, France, Injunction, Procedure, SPC

(Véron & Associés)/

On 8 June 2012, the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris rendered an interesting decision concerning Losartan. It particularly deals with two questions: the conditions of the SPC’s paediatric extension (Regulation (EC) No. 1901/2006) and the preliminary injunction as organized by Article L. 615-3 (implementing Article 9 of Directive (EC) No. 2004/48) of the French Intellectual Property Code. The US company E.I….

(Cross-border) jurisdiction, (Indirect) infringement, Case Law, European Union, Procedure

(Brinkhof)/

The Court of Justice ruled that claims against different companies located in different Member States marketing the same product regarding infringement of a a European patent in one jurisdiction were so closely connected that they may be decided jointly to prevent irreconcilable judgments in the sense of Art. 6(1) EC 44/2001. In the present circumstances,…

(Cross-border) jurisdiction, (Indirect) infringement, Countries, European Union, Germany

(Rospatt Osten Pross )/

The District Court of Duesseldorf will set up a third division (panel of judges) for patent infringement litigation. In addition, the Duesseldorf Court of Appeal will at least staff up, and possibly set up a second patent senate for appeal cases. With about 600 patent cases per year, the District Court of Duesseldorf is the…

European Union, Poland

(Allen & Overy)/

The Polish Presidency put a lot of effort into the proposed regulation on unitary patent protection, the translation arrangements, and the court system for patent litigation. However, due to the lack of a common agreement among member states on the location of the central patent court, the signing ceremony of the uniform patent system scheduled…

Case Law, European Union, Procedure, SPC

(Brinkhof)/

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Article 13 of the old SPC Regulation (EEC 1768/92, identical to article 13 of the “new” SPC Regulation (EC469/2009) in conjunction with Article 36 of the Pediatric Regulation (EC 1901/2006), allow for the grant of an SPC of negative duration. The additional term provided by…

Antibodies, Countries, European Union, SPC

(EIP)/

Multiple rulings of the CJEU on the SPC Regulation fail to answer questions posed by the national courts, result in greater confusion and give rise to a need for yet more references. Introduction In Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd v Medimmune Ltd & Anor [2012] EWHC 181, Mr Justice Arnold was required to apply the recent…

European Union

(Clifford Chance)/

Last December, the negotiations relating to the future creation of a Patent Court for the European Union (“EU”) collapsed as a consequence of the failure on the part of Germany, the United Kingdom and France to reach an agreement on the location of the so-called “central” division. As is usually the case in this type…