The king is dead! Long live the king! An expression traditionally uttered at the death of a monarch to acclaim a new king on the death of his predecessor. Could it be applied to our traditional French saisie-contrefaçon at the advent of saisie-contrefaçon before the UPC? This question came to mind last week during a…
This week we reported on the case between Huawei and Netgear, in which the defendant had obtained a production order for a comparable license granted by Huawei to Qualcomm, the production of which Netgear had obtained via a decision of the Munich local division on 24 April 2024. It is interesting to note that this…
Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my interest, or rather my passion, for several Patent Law topics, including notably SEPs (see notably here, here and here), proof of infringement (see notably here, here and here) and UPC (see notably here, here and here). So far, UPC has not (yet) been the scene…
In his Abbott v Dexcom ([2024] EWHC 1664 (Pat)) judgment, published on 28 June 2024, Mr Justice Mellor was faced with the rather unenviable task of determining the approach of the Skilled Team when “due to their differing experiences and expertise” it was unclear if any of the experts were in a position to comment…
A short but nevertheless interesting judgment was handed down last week on the different roles that technical experts on the one hand and scientific advisers on the other have to play in proceedings in the English Patents Court. The decision of Mellor J followed a case management conference in an entitlement dispute between Dr Vanessa…
Judges deciding patent matters in Brazil usually have none to limited technical background. In view of the complexity of patent cases, it is often that we see judges appointing a court examiner, as defined by law: “the judge will be assisted by a court expert whenever the proof of the fact depends on technical or…
The Brazilian Patent Office (BRPTO) is improving its examination procedure, trying to reduce the backlog. As more decisions are issued, we are learning about the approach of the examiners to different topics in patent law. An ongoing hot topic is whether the examiners are accepting post-filing experimental evidence during patent examination. The Metallurgy and Material…
The transposition of the 2016 directive on trade secrets into French law by the law of 31 July 2018 and its implementing decree could have led to the expectation of difficulties with the so-called “saisies-contrefaçons”. The main one to remember is undoubtedly the application of the new article R. 153-1 of French Commercial Code to…
As many readers will already know, two new full-time Patents Judges have been appointed to the English Court in the last 9 months – Meade and Mellor JJ. Despite the challenges that the global pandemic has brought, the English Patents Court has coped remarkably well and there has been no let-up in the progress of…
It’s an understatement to say that it’s not always very easy to be a French patent litigator in a transnational litigation, in any case a good dose of humor is needed: how many jokes have I heard about our jurisdictional system? Then you have to accept that France is almost systematically considered as the territory…
