Many practitioners in Germany thought the doctrine of equivalence to be rather at its end following two Supreme Court (BGH)-decisions in 2011 (“Okklusionsvorrichtung” and “Dyglycidverbindung”). Now, the renowned Higher Regional Court Duesseldorf has – in my eyes, correctly – made clear that the old dog is still alive. Background According to standard practice of the…
The use and circulation of a product which has been put on the market by the patentee or a third party acting with the consent of the patentee (e.g. a licensee) cannot be prohibited by the patentee anymore. This concept of exhaustion is not only applicable to the territory of Germany, but to the entire…
The EPO Board of Appeal 3.2.06 decided on 20 February 2014 to refer the following question to the Enlarged Board of Appeal:
“Is an appeal inadmissible or not deemed to have been filed, if both the notice of appeal had been filed and the fee for appeal had been paid after the expiry of the appeal term pursuant to Art. 108, 1st sentence EPC?”
General disadvantages of fixed-dose combinations cannot reduce the reasonable expectation of success derivable from the prior art with respect to the formulation of a pharmaceutical composition containing two specific active pharmaceutical ingredients. A synergistic effect is not suitable to establish inventive step of a fixed-dose combination of two active pharmaceutical ingredients, where the synergistic effect…
The Court of Appeal Düsseldorf held that the offering of certain products by the defendants was not covered by the scope of the patent due to the specific “Swiss type” wording, which does not grant an absolute product protection, and due to the fact that the advertising of the defendants did not address the patented…
by Hetti Hilge The Higher Regional Court Düsseldorf has set up a second Senate (panel of judges) that is specifically competent for patent infringement litigation. The Higher Regional Court is the appeal instance for first instance judgments of the Regional Court Düsseldorf in patent cases. Already at the beginning of 2013, a third civil chamber…
Article 123 (2) EPC and corresponding national provisions prohibit an applicant or patentee from amending a patent application or patent such that its subject-matter extends beyond the content of the application as originally filed. The statute is the same throughout Europe, but the practice is not always so. An issue where the Case Law of…
The later finding of the biological relationships underlying the activity of a drug does not constitute a new teaching for technical action if the indication, the dosage and the way of using the drug coincide with an the prior disclosed use of a drug for the treatment of a disease (confirmed by FCJ 9 June…
The FCJ held that the right to claim priority, which is in fact the right to file a follow-up application, can be transferred to a third party who was not the applicant of the earlier application. This transfer is governed by the law of the earlier application, in this case German law. Neither German law…
In preliminary injunction proceedings: to fulfil the requirement of urgency a patentee must actively and with determination enforce the patent. A patentee does not have to wait for the outcome of nullity proceedings if a generic company has launched an infringing product on the market, thereby causing irreparable harm to patentee. A full summary of…
