On May 9, 2017, the Dutch-speaking Brussels court of commerce handed down its decision on the merits in the context of an infringement action initiated by Orion and its exclusive licensee Novartis against Belgian generic company Eurogenerics. The proceedings relate to Orion’s European patent EP 1 189 608, concerning an oral three-in-one solid composition of…

On April 26 2017, the Eastern High Court of Denmark gave an interesting decision in a case between Orifarm Generics A/S and Novartis A/S, who is the holder of a patent and a number of utility models regarding a transdermal patch. On August 12 2014, the Maritime and Commercial Court had found that Orifarm by…

Since Warner-Lambert successfully defended its pregabalin patent and obtained injunctions against generic market entry in Apotex Pty Ltd v Warner-Lambert Company LLC (No 2) [2016] FCA 1238 (see our coverage of the case in ‘Carving out the principles: a comparative review of the Australia and UK Lyrica cases’), the Australian Lyrica dispute has continued through…

A new president of the European Patent Organisation, the person who will succeed the controversial president Benoît Battistelli in June 2018, will be chosen this autumn. That is the expectation of Martijn van Dam, Dutch secretary of state for Economic Affairs. Van Dam said this in a debate last week with parliament on the ‘deteriorating…

On 24 November 2016, the Court of Appeal of Barcelona (Section 15) handed down a judgment in which it confirmed that “the interpretation of the scope of protection of a patent for the purposes of analysing its validity cannot be different from when its infringement is analysed”. The Judges also highlighted the relevance of the…

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board erroneously construed the term “aseptic” in an inter partes review (IPR) of a patent for a method of aseptically bottling sterilized food, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. The Board erred in construing the term as incorporating “any applicable United States FDA standard” rather…

Most readers will be aware of the so-called “all elements” test, whereby patent infringement is normally discarded unless the allegedly infringing device or process reproduces each and every element of the claim. The “all elements” test contrasts with the so-called “essentiality” test. According to this test, there can still be infringement if an element of…

The SUEPO, the biggest trade union at the European Patent Organisation, filed a complaint against The Netherlands before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on 8 May 2017. According to the SUEPO, as host to one of the main offices of the European Patent Office, The Netherlands should have acted to end the breach…

On April 3, 2017, the latest decision was handed down in the patent revocation battle between medical device manufacturer Nouvag and Jean Malak, a plastic surgeon specialized in liposuction. This conflict has taken on epic proportions, in part because of the ruling rendered by the Belgian Supreme Court on February 3, 2012 confirming that the…

Pharmaceutical polymorph patents are regarded as effective means and important secondary pharmaceutical patents to extend the life cycle of pharmaceutical patent protection. However, the inventiveness evaluation criteria for pharmaceutical polymorph patents have become much stricter in China while the amount of patent application keeps soaring. The clinical research of pharmaceutical polymorphs commenced in 1950s internationally…