Decisions made by the European Patent Office’s boards of appeal.
UPC 252/2023 NanoString v Harvard ACT_551180/2023 (UPC_CFI_252/2023) The UPC’s Munich Central Division has recently issued its decision revoking Harvard’s EP 2794928 B1 (“the Patent”) in DE, NL, and FR, with other EPO member states likely excluded from the decision on commercial grounds having lapsed during opposition proceedings in 2019. The decision is appealable. The NanoString decision…
The recently released judgment in J1/24 (relating to EP 3660979B1), from the Legal Board of Appeal at the European Patent Office (EPO) is a divisive judgment, which could potentially have far-reaching implications. Existing legislation ignored/overturned by J1/24 The European Patent Convention is clear that a divisional application must be filed from a pending parent application,…
On 28 May 2024, the UPC Court of Appeal (in decision UPC_CoA_22/2024) upheld a decision of the Court of First Instance, Central Division (Paris Seat) not to stay revocation proceedings before the UPC pending parallel opposition proceedings before the EPO concerning the same patent. Following previous Court of Appeal decisions, this non-technical appeal was adjudicated…
It is well known that the EPO Boards of Appeal take a strict line on admissibility of new elements of the appeal case under Articles 12 and 13 RPBA. But if the request to hold new elements inadmissible is itself filed late, the admissibility of the inadmissibility request may be questioned, see e.g. T 500/16…
As William Blake put it in Auguries of Innocence, written in 1803 but not published until 1863, “A Robin Redbreast in a cage, puts all heaven in a rage”. So did the ill-crafted concept of plausibility with the case law of the EPO’s Technical Boards of Appeal (TBA). It introduced an artificial cage that trapped…
Even the best European Patent Attorneys may occasionally have to represent a client in an appeal case that turns out to be increasingly hopeless, or they are representing the patentee in examination appeal proceedings in a field where technology advances faster than the Boards of Appeal are able to deal with their cases. In such…
On 9 July 2021, the Court of Milan issued a preliminary injunction (PI) prohibiting a generic company from selling everolimus for use in combination with an aromatase inhibitor in the treatment of hormone receptor positive breast tumours. The PI was issued on the basis of EP 3351246, which is one of the patents held by…
The Enlarged Board of Appeal has now issued its long-awaited full decision in case G 1/21. Readers can access it here. The decision deserves a few comments. The Enlarged Board’s advance publication of the order of the decision in July was viewed by many as a sort of cliffhanger. This was because the question answered…
In its much-awaited decision in case G 1/21, the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO has evaded to answer the high-profile question whether videoconferencing against the will of (one of) the parties is compatible with the right to oral proceedings. Last March (case T 1807/15), a technical board of the EPO had referred the…
I can imagine what the reader might think when reading these few lines: another text on artificial intelligence (“AI”) and the Patent Law! (With perhaps: the author is obsessed with the Daft Punk split[1]). My mantra is: “Never disappoint the reader”! So both are true. That said, concerning the reception of AI by Patent Law…
