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It is self-evident that the Unitary Patent system is good for Europe. The project will attract the best judges, there is a good set of procedural rules, the industry wants it, this is a ‘no brainer’ and the start of the system is taking too long. Alexander Ramsay, chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the…
Anyone who ends up litigating in Spain, be it as complainant or as a defendant, should be wary of the rigidity of Spanish patent litigation. Unlike in other jurisdictions, where the parties enjoy leeway to fine-tune their initial positions down the road, according to Spain’s Civil Procedure Act, the initial statements made by the parties…
Adding to the long series of referrals concerning the interpretation of Art. 3(a) Reg. (EC) No. 469/2009 (“SPC Regulation”) (“the product is protected by a basic patent in force”) the UK Court of Appeal (Sandoz/Searle, Case No. A3 2017 1483) on 25 January 2018 referred further questions to the CJEU. This latest referral from the…
Over the last few decades, the United States has been incrementally harmonizing its patent law with the rest of the world. Those efforts continued with the signing of the America Invents Act (“AIA”) in 2011. For example, the AIA created a first inventor-to-file patent system, while all but eliminating the best mode requirement. One area…
In a lawsuit involving the alleged infringement of an Exmark patent that described a lawn mower with improved flow-control baffles, a federal district court erroneously based its summary judgment finding of no invalidity solely on the fact that the patent claim at issue had survived multiple reexaminations, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal…
In a long-awaited judgment, the Spanish Supreme Court has clarified the application of the TRIPS agreement to patent applications affected by the Spanish reservation to the EPC: Article 70.7 of TRIPS allowed owners of patent applications filed before 7 October 1992, but which were still pending when TRIPS came into force, to amend the patents…
(UPDATES) The European Patent Litigators Association (EPLIT) is the latest of several organisations that have published their view on the constitutional complaint against ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement in Germany. The complaint was filed last year by European patent attorney Dr. Ingve Björn Stjerna. The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany requested a series…
Latvia has completed the ratification formalities of the Unified Patent Court Agreement by depositing its instrument of ratification with the secretariat of the EU Council. It is the 15th state to do so, after Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden. Latvia will form a Nordic-Baltic…
In our last blog (Will the Spanish Patent Office accept the modification of an SPC’s term after the Incyte judgment?), published on 8 January 2018, we raised the question as to whether the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (“SPTO”) would accept the modification of the term of a supplementary protection certificate (“SPC”) after the judgment…
There has been much excitement and comment amongst the UK patent profession following the Supreme Court’s decision in Actavis v Eli Lilly [2017] UKSC 48 (see previous comment here) on patent claim construction. However, the Court in that case did not clarify how “normal” principles of claim interpretation are now to be applied, and whether…
