When will the Unified Patent Court open its doors and the Unitary Patent (UP) become available? The German constitutional complaint against ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) has dashed expectations that the UP system could launch at the end of this year. Considerable delays and even the end of the system in its…
European states lack awareness of their obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and have established associations such as the EPO and the UPC, without anyone accounting for guarantees with regard to democracy, the rule of law and human rights. Professor Siegfried Broß said this in…
In this case the Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) allowed a compulsory licence under a patent for a pharmaceutical active ingredient for the first time ever. The Court held that a public interest in such a licence may still exist where it concerns only a small group of patients. In particular, the interest may be…
A data sequence can only be regarded as a product directly obtained by a patent-protected process if it has tangible technical properties that are directly imparted on it by this method, and if the data sequence itself can therefore be appropriate subject-matter of a product patent. The representation of an experimental result obtained by a…
The Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court has been making ‘good progress’ regarding the ratification of the UPCA. In an update posted on its website today, the Preparatory Committee announces: ‘We now have 14 full ratifications and more in the pipeline, making it reasonable to expect that we will begin operations with closer to…
In its research concerning the complaint that was filed against ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement, the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) gave a series of mainly German institutions and associations the opportunity to submit their views. A spokesman of the Court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, declared in answer to questions of Kluwer IP Law that a…
The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany has started investigating the constitutional complaint that was filed earlier this year against the German ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement. As German attorney at law Dr. Ingve Björn Stjerna reported last week, the Court ‘most recently sent the constitutional complaint (earlier reported on by Kluwer IP Law…
In March our partner Hetti Hilge reported on a preliminary injunction by which the Federal Patent Court granted Merck an interlocutory compulsory license for Merck’s HIV drug Isentress in the light of Shionogi’s Raltegravir patent EP 1 422 218 (link). The compusory license has now been confirmed in the second instance PI proceedings by the…
The surprising request by the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) to the German President to wait with his executing of the UPC ratification law, pending the outcome of a – heretofore unknown – constitutional complaint, has made many people wonder what is behind this constitutional complaint and on which alleged violations of the German Basic…
by Bernward Zollner It is often worthwhile to read again former judgments of the German Bun-desgerichtshof. In a judgment of 13 July 2010 – docket no. Xa ZR 126/07 – the court has discussed a patent on a staple cartridge for staples for surgical purposes (“Klam-mernahtgerät”). The court has stated that a disclosure is enabling…
