by Dr. André Sabellek In a recent judgment the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) took a stand on the question whether to grant the patent infringer a grace period for marketing the infringing products for a certain time after the final judgment (judgment of May 10, 2016, court docket: X ZR 114/13 – Wärmetauscher [heat…

The Patents Court (Birss J) held that medac’s patent EP (UK) 2 046 332 relating to the use of a formulation of methotrexate at a concentration of about 50 mg/ml for the treatment of individuals with inflammatory autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) by subcutaneous injection, was obvious over one of the prior art…

Actavis Laboratories UT, Inc. was unable to show that patents licensed to Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc. covering its testosterone gel product Fortesta® were invalid as obvious in light of prior art, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Therefore, a district court ruling finding that the patents were not obvious was affirmed…

The Federal Court of Justice held that claim construction is the core task of a court dealing with infringement and that this must be done independently from the claim construction as used by the FCJ in a previous nullity decision about that same patent. The Court explicitly stated that there is no legal or factual…

The Finnish Market Court, as the court of first instance, ruled that the reversed burden of proof which is applied in infringement proceedings involving patents granted for manufacturing processes of novel products is also applicable in preliminary injunction matters. As the parties had submitted completely contrary expert opinions, which could not be assessed within the…

The recruitment procedure for judges of the Unified Patent Court has been suspended until more is known about the consequences of the UK’s Brexit vote for the Unitary Patent system. Earlier this week, the UPC Preparatory Committee announced the first round of selection of candidates has continued despite the Brexit vote, but ‘the commencement of…

To ensure the continued development of medicinal products which are the result of enormous R&D costs the supplementary protection certificate (‘SPC’) was introduced into EU law in 1993 with the entry into force of the SPC Regulation (Council Regulation (EEC) No 1768/92). After the Ukraine’s declaration of independence, hard work on adopting new legislation began…

This question was tackled by the Full Federal Court of Australia in Kafataris v Davis [2016] FCAFC 134. The patent in suit related to an alternative manner of playing card games. The player could play a primary game while at the same time exercising betting options on a secondary or auxiliary game, either separately from…