The Court of Justice clarified the requirements for grant of an SPC under Articles 3(a) and 3(b) of the SPC Regulation. According to the Court, on the basis of Article 3(a) an SPC cannot be granted for active ingredients not specified in the wording of the claims of the basic patent. With reference to Article…
By Miquel Montañá In year 2021, Italy will celebrate the 600th anniversary of the patent granted by the Republic of Florence to Filippo Brunelleschi for his ship “Il Badalone”, the first patent ever granted. Quite ironically, the fathers of the first patent, and of the first Patent Act, approved by the Republic of Venice in…
On 24 November 2011 the CJEU passed judgment in the cases C-322/10 (Medeva) and C-422/10 (Georgetown). In the Medeva judgment, the Court answers six questions put to it by the UK Court of Appeal and the High Court respectively. The facts are deemed known by the reader – they can be conveniently reduced to: A…
In its judgement of 18 October 2011, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has confirmed that human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) do not constitute patentable subject matter, given the ban under European law on patents for technologies entailing the uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes. The patent which gave…
The creation of a Unified Patent Litigation System seems to have a lot of political momentum these days, with one proposal following the other at fairly short intervals. This blog discusses the latest Council Presidency proposal of a draft agreement on a Unified Patent Court and draft Statute of 26 October 2011. While a lot of desirable progress has been made, the current draft agreement is still far from being ready for signature and requires both thorough consideration and amendment in several quite important aspects, not least as regards finances.
With this groundbreaking decision of the CJEU, the parties entitled to injunctive relief are provided with the opportunity to obtain not only an enforceable injunction, but if the injunction is violated, they can also ask the original court to impose disciplinary fines on the defendant in a simple, fast and cost-efficient manner and then enforce these fines in other EU member states, as a rule at the domicile of the defendant.
The Court of Justice of the European Union in clarifying the phrase ‘civil and commercial matters’ in Article 1 of the Brussels I Regulation (No 44/2001) ruled that said Regulation is also applicable to court decisions that contain an order to pay penalties to ensure compliance with a judgment given in a civil and commercial…
As the readers will know, the complex architecture of the European patent system allows third parties to challenge the validity of a patent by filing an opposition before the European Patent Office (“EPO”), by filing a revocation action before national Courts, or by using both routes. In some cases, this has given rise to the…
The Proposal for a New Regulation on Customs Action of May 2011 is presently under discussion in a Council Working Group. Among other topics, in particular the new right to be heard, the limitation of simplified procedures to counterfeit and pírated goods, the new procedure for the destruction of goods in small consignments, the incorporation of topography rights into the Regulation, the handling of goods in transit and the structure of the new Regulation will probably need further clarification.The end of discussions is presently not to foresee.
The readers will recall that one of the requirements for obtaining preliminary injunctions introduced by Directive 2004/48 (the so-called “Enforcement Directive”) is proving that there is an “imminent” threat of infringement. In cases dealing with the pharmaceutical sector, Spanish Courts have interpreted “imminent” to mean that the defendant is in an objective position to launch…
