Netherlands

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Extent of Protection, Infringement, Litigation, Netherlands, Pharma, Pharmaceutical patent

(Brinkhof)/ /16 Comments

Pemetrexed, yet again: last Wednesday the District Court of The Hague, swimming against the current and after a deep dive in the prosecution file, decided that Fresenius did not infringe Eli Lilly’s ‘pemetrexed disodium’ patent with a generic product that does not contain pemetrexed disodium, not even by equivalence. The basic facts of the widespread…

Netherlands, Pharma

/ /1 Comment

The focus in The Netherlands on the option of compounding medicines as a means to circumvent the use of (expensive) authorised medicinal products of pharmaceutical companies and to pressurize them into lowering their prices, is confusing and possibly misleading and not necessarily good for patients. Attorney-at-law Hanneke Later-Nijland, also a trained pharmacist and a former…

Case Law, Inventive step, Netherlands

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

Although at first instance the patent was found to lack inventive step without using the problem-and-solution approach, the use of the PSA by the Court of Appeal did not make a difference to the outcome in the present case. Case date: 28 May 2019 Case number: 200.222.873/01 Court: Court of Appeal of The Hague A full…

Case Law, Netherlands

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

The Court held that the CJEU decision in the Bericarp case, where it was decided that for invalidity procedures no reimbursement of full litigation costs applies, did apply to invalidity proceedings if these did not contain an enforcement procedure. Case number: 26 March 2019 Case date: 200.230.424/01C/09/509050 / HA ZA 16-435 Court: Court of Appeal of…

evidence, Infringement, Litigation, Netherlands, Procedure

(Brinkhof)/

… that is the question in recent ‘Dutch discovery’ proceedings in a patent dispute between beer giants Anheuser-Busch Inbev (‘ABI’) and Heineken. Well, sort of: the legal question was if ABI would be granted access to documentation seized at Heineken’s premises in the Netherlands. The Hague Court’s Preliminary Measures Judge’s answer did all but refresh…

Case Law, Netherlands, Trade secrets

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

Access to seized goods and data should be denied in preliminary proceedings if the seized material contains trade secrets and there is a serious chance that the patent will be held invalid. Case date: 01 February 2019 Case number: C/09/557229 / KG ZA 18-771 Court: Provisions Judge of the District Court of The Hague A full summary of…

Inventive step, Netherlands, Pharmaceutical patent, SPC, Validity

(Brinkhof)/

In nullity proceedings initiated by Accord Healthcare (“Accord”) the District Court of The Hague has held Shire-NPS Pharmaceuticals’ (“NPS”) patent EP 1 203 761, the basic patent for an SPC covering cinacalcet, invalid for lack of inventive step and declared the SPC null. In short, the court considered that the (selection of) cinacalcet provided no…

European Union, France, Germany, Netherlands, Pharma, SPC, TRIPS, TRIPs Agreement

, (Vossius & Partner)/

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…