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In September of 2013, the Spanish Patents and Trademarks Office (“SPTO”) published a draft Patents Act aimed at modernising the old Act 11/1986, of 20 March, on Patents, which is close to celebrating its 30th anniversary. After hearing the stakeholders concerned, on 11 April 2014 the Council of Ministers approved the draft and sent it…
The English High Court (Arnold J.) has granted an application for a stay of the UK High Court proceedings to revoke the UK designation of an EP patent pending the outcome of opposition proceedings at the EPO. The decision is unusual as Arnold J had previously refused to stay the validity proceedings in this case…
During examination poor quality drawings had been replaced by drawings that made more details visible. The opponent argued that replacement of these drawings by the original drawings, to overcome Article 123(2) objections, extended the scope of protection (Article 123(3)). The board concluded that the skilled person remained clearly able to determine what was protected, because…
By Charles Pommiès, François Renard, Jie Tong, and Benjamin Bai Speed read In April 2015, China’s SAIC released its long-awaited guidelines on curbing abuses of intellectual property rights (“IPRs”). It introduces a new basis for forced licensing of IPRs where such rights constitute an “essential facility”. Therefore, assessing market position and reviewing licensing policies under…
Cost reductions obtained by introducing the Unitary Patent package should not be nullified by the setting of renewal fees at a high level. This would amount to the patent offices ‘clawing back’ the savings obtained instead of passing them on to innovating businesses. Lucía Caudet, spokeswoman for the European Commission told this in an interview…
On February 5, 2015, the USPTO announced the launch of an Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative and solicited public comments on certain proposals aimed at improving patent quality, which are due by May 5, 2015. With a few weeks left in the comment period, the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Commerce issued…
The FCJ held that the Defendant in a nullity action is only required to prepare an auxiliary request following the preliminary opinion of the Federal Patent Court which takes those aspects into consideration which were mentioned by the Patent Court. In general, there is no reason for the Defendant to prepare additional auxiliary requests with…
A panel of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO rejected a request to replace the EBA chairman for suspected partiality. The reasons for allowing such a request in decision R19/12 had since been removed because the chairman had discontinued all his managerial activities in the senior management committees of the EPO. Under…
The Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice) in the decision Audiosignalcodierung (judgement of 3 February 2015, X ZR 69/13) confirmed the principle established in the Bundesgerichtshof decision Funkuhr II, according to which the delivery of a product to a third party in a territory outside of Germany constitutes a patent infringement in Germany if the…
Myles Jelf (Bristows LLP) talks about the difficulty with software patents. The difficulty arises from a need to identify the dividing line between the pure algorithm which should not be patentable and a technical invention which happens to use a computer. There are three different definitions between the UK, EPO and theUS. The EPC Article…
