The European Patent Office (EPO) is an organ of the European Patent Organisation, an intergovernmental organisation that was set up on 7 October 1977 on the basis of the European Patent Convention (EPC) signed in Munich in 1973. The EPO is responsible for the uniform procedure to grant European patents. Once the EPO has granted a European patent, the patent holder can validate it in every single contracting state. In the future, the EPO will also be in charge of deciding on requests for unitary effect of European patents under the Unitary Patent system.
On 13 June 2001, the Supreme Court published a judgment dated 27 April 2011 by virtue of which the Court rejected an appeal against the judgment of 17 March 2008 from the Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 15), whereby this Court had confirmed the novelty of calcium atorvastatin, protected in patent EP 409,281. The claimant…
Can a claim directed to a “Composition comprising A, B and C” amended into a “Composition consisting of A, B and C”, i.e. a composition that only contains A, B and C and no further components? Or does such an amendment violate the added matter provision of Art. 123(2) EPC? That is the question, and…
The Supreme Court of the United States issued an opinion on appeal (as Bilski v. Kappos) that affirmed the judgment of the CAFC of affirming the rejection of the patent, but revised many aspects of the CAFC’s decision. In their decision, handed down on June 28, 2010, the Supreme Court rejected the machine-or-transformation test as…
