The assessment of inventive step is a legal assessment which can be reviewed by the Supreme Court through what is known as the “cassational appeal”. The Supreme Court confirms the validity and suitability of the “problem-and-solution approach” to assess the inventive step requirement and that it is not sufficient that the expert in the field…
Now that Italy has changed its mind and joined, Spain has become the only EU member state to stay out of the Unitary Patent (UP) system. How good or bad is this for the country and its companies? And will anything change because of the CJEU’s rejection of the Spanish complaints against the UP on…
by Dominic Adair Day 2 of AIPPI’s 2015 Global Congress in Rio brought with it the Pharma Sessions: trade marks, personalised medicine and two sessions with a local flavour – technology transfer under the Brazilian Government’s PDP programme (promoting local laboratories) and whether the practice of Brazil’s regulatory authority (ANVISA) to challenge patents prior to…
Secessionist pressure grows in Catalonia, after regional elections on 27 September 2015 (qualified as an informal referendum on independence) were won by supporters of an independent Catalonia. In Scotland supporters of independence have been far from silenced since they lost a referendum on the same issue last year. Kluwer IP Law found the following article…
Article 118 of the EPC (entitled “Unity of the European patent application or European patent”) states that: “[…] the text of the application or patent shall be uniform for all designated Contracting States, unless this Convention provides otherwise.” Like other Articles such as Article 2.2, 14.3, 43.1, 130.1 or 148.1, Article 118 follows the logic…
On 3 June 2015, the High Court of Justice (“Tribunal Superior de Justicia”) of Madrid handed down a judgment which has alerted everyone of the need to have robust systems in place to make sure that a deadline for paying renewal fees is not missed. The facts of the case may be briefly summarised as…
One of the issues which will be discussed at the next annual meeting of AIPPI, due to take place in Rio de Janeiro in October 2015, is Q244, entitled “Inventorship of multinational inventions.” In today’s world, it is becoming increasingly frequent for inventions to be the outcome of teamwork conducted by persons from different jurisdictions….
On 25 July 2015, the Spanish Official State Gazette published the text of Act 24/2015, of 24 July 2015, on Patents (“New Patents Act” or “the new Law”), which is due to come into force on 1 April 2017. Although a blog is too short a place to discuss a law that has 186 articles,…
Technological innovation has left deep footprints on the evolution of International Law. In the mid-1960s, in his course at The Hague Academy of International Law, professor Mouton explained that every time inventors conceived a revolutionary invention, politicians had to devise an international organization to take care of it. A classic example is the establishment of…
Spain will not change its mind and join the Unitary Patent package, now that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has dismissed its legal challenges of the patent package, laid out in the EU Regulations 1257/2012 and 1260/2012 and the UPC Agreement. This is the expectation of the Confederation of Employers and…
