The tendency of English people to be understated in their use of language (other than on Twitter…) is often joked about with continental friends and colleagues. For example, when an English person expresses a slight disagreement, their continental counterpart might have felt more able to be blunt and say that something is just plain wrong. …
The German government has been acting fast since the Federal Constitutional Court declared void the German ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement in March. It submitted a new draft bill to ratify the UPCA last week, which was sent for consultation to associations and other institutions. Their deadline for filing opinions is three weeks….
The English Patents Court has often been regarded as a relatively favourable jurisdiction for patentees seeking interim relief in the life sciences arena. This is for various reasons, including the fact that the English Court follows the approach adopted by the House of Lords in the American Cyanamid case, in which an assessment of the…
The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) in the UK has called for clarity over the patenting of innovations created by artificial intelligence. The issue has drawn a lot of attention lately. Last January, the EPO stated a machine cannot be an inventor, refusing patent applications EP 18 275 163 and EP 18 275 174 in which a machine called…
After the UK’s Prime Minister announced via a televised address on 23 March 2020 the lockdown of the UK in a bid to combat the ever-increasing impact of COVID-19, legal practitioners were keen to see how the UK Courts would cope with such measures especially given that in the High Court at least, video and…
On 1 April 2020, the Court of Appeal, led by Floyd LJ, handed down judgment concerning the strike out of an Arrow declaration in litigation between Mexichem and Honeywell. Honeywell owns six patents that focus on the use of two refrigerants (‘ze’ and ‘yf’) in mobile air-conditioning systems (“MACs”), often used in cars, with a…
On Friday 13 March 2020, Birss J handed down a pair of judgments in the litigation between Evalve (a member of the Abbott group of companies) and Edwards Lifesciences, a veteran of UK patent litigation over the past decade. In the first judgment Evalve’s two UK patents, EP (UK) 1 408 850 and EP (UK)…
The Patents Court found Emson’s patents for an expandable garden hose obvious in light of a piece of prior art relating to a self-elongating hose for supplying oxygen to an oxygen mask for aviation crew. In its judgment, the Court considered in detail the law on public prior use, in particular whether separate instances of…
A parliamentary committee in the UK has asked the government to clarify its position on the Unified Patent Court (UPC). Although late February the office of Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed to several media that the UK “will no longer seek to participate in the Unitary Patent project”, an official statement has not been issued….
The announcement of the UK government that it won’t participate in the Unitary Patent system has sent a shock wave through the European patent community. One issue is obvious from the reactions to the UK decision: the future of the system, which had been uncertain for some time due to the Brexit and the German…
