Claim construction and scope of protection are perhaps the most hotly contested topics in Dutch patent law. Over the last ten years, we have had no less than six Supreme Court decisions dealing with these matters. The latest development in this continuing saga is the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bayer / Sandoz, which offers…
Increasing the (grounds of the) claim at a late stage of the proceedings in accelerated patent proceedings is contrary to due process of law. The claimed printer cartridge is not novel since no structural (technical) features distinguish the patent from the prior art. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP…
The Dutch part of EP 119 – allegedly essential to the UMTS standard – was found to be obvious over the latest draft of the UMTS standard pre-priority date read in conjunction with a document of a UMTS Working Group proposing changes thereto. The skilled person would read these together and so be confronted with…
The District Court of The Hague invalidated two patents for a lack of inventive step. The patents claimed to solve two separate problems of a known production method for glatiramer acetate. The court held that one problem would be solved as a bonus effect of applying common general knowledge. Solving a problem resulting from non-application…
The District Court holds that Shionogi’s SPC for rosuvastatin (Crestor®) is invalid in part for added matter and grants a declaration of non-infringement for Resolution Chemicals’ proposed zinc salt of rosuvastatin. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
Competence of the Dutch courts is determined solely based on facts furnished by plaintiff. Jurisdiction for patent entitlement claims is governed by the Protocol on Recognition to the EPC, not by the Brussels I Regulation. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
The Dutch draft legislation to implement the Unitary Patent Package in the Netherlands includes an interesting ‘safety net’ provision. If registration of unitary effect of a European patent is rejected by the EPO and this is confirmed by the UPC (as the case may be), there will be a possibility to validate the patent in…
The seizure of evidence is part of every patent litigator’s (pre-trial) arsenal. To some extent this measure is harmonised by the Enforcement Directive (art. 6 Directive 2004/48/EC). However, it does not yet have the same fire power in every European state. To get a taste of the Dutch state of play, specifically what the threshold…
The District Court The Hague finds that it is competent based on Article 7 Dutch Code of Civil Procedure (Article 6(1) Brussels I / Article 8(1) Brussels Ibis – plurality of defendants) even though the article’s preconditions are no longer met. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
The behavior of EPO president Benoît Battistelli is bad for the reputation of the European Patent Office and may in the longer term force him to resign. Wouter Pors, IP practitioner of Bird & Bird, said this in an interview with Kluwer IP Law, on the occasion of a recent decision of the Dutch appeal…
