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The United Kingdom wants to stay in the Unitary Patent system post-Brexit. This has been confirmed in the UK’s Brexit White Paper, which was published today. According to article 151 of the paper, ‘The UK has ratified the Unified Patent Court Agreement and intends to explore staying in the Court and unitary patent system after…
On 12 July 2017, the UK Supreme Court handed down a ruling which caused a shockwave to resound across the UK patent community. For more than a decade, when addressing the issue of the construction and infringement of a patent, every practitioner would have focussed on the question prescribed by Lord Hoffmann in Kirin Amgen:…
The federal district court in San Juan, Puerto Rico, erred in dismissing copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and state law claims brought by a music contestant against pop recording artist Enrique Martin-Morales (aka Ricky Martin) on the ground that the contest rules compelled arbitration of the claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston has ruled….
The influential Barcelona Court of Appeal corrected a finding of the Barcelona Patents Court, which – to great surprise – had lifted an injunction on finding that Swiss-type claims were affected by the Spanish Reservation to the European Patent Convention, and thereby ineffective in Spain. Although this decision arrived only after SPC expiry and thus…
The applicant, Teva, sought an order for the revocation of the Irish designation of European Patent No. (IE) 1379220 entitled “Inhalation Capsules” (the “220 Patent”) on the grounds of (i) obviousness, (ii) an “AgrEvo” challenge and (iii) insufficiency. The Court ruled in Boehringer’s favour by upholding the validity of the 220 Patent and rejecting all…
The Federal Court of Justice held that the correct assessment of the involvement of an inventive activity requires that the problem is first identified without knowledge of the invention. This is necessary for localising the appropriate starting point for the skilled person’s desire to provide a contribution to the arts. It is not admissible to…
Effectiveness, international cooperation and staff relations are three main areas on which Antonio Campinos intends to focus as new president of the European Patent Office. Campinos, who started in office on 1 July 2018, wrote this in a message which was published today on the EPO website. According to Campinos, it is ‘an immense honour…
The Supreme Court concluded that it was appropriate for it to reformulate the so-called Improver (or ‘Protocol’) questions, which provide guidance as to whether a variant is immaterial where there is no literal infringement. The significant change is the introduction of hindsight into the determination of the second question: “Would it be obvious to the…
Historically, the Spanish Patents and Trademarks Office (“SPTO”) has rejected the correction of the registered term of supplementary protection certificates (“SPCs”), even in cases where such term has had to be recalculated due to the new case law emanating from the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”). As reported in our posts of…
In a case concerning two divisional patents derived from the same parent application, relating to ‘transcatheter heart valves’ or THVs, the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision that one patent was invalid for lack of inventive step and the second patent was valid. The Court of Appeal also provided guidance on cross-examination of…
