On 10 March, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) issued its long-awaited opinion on the patentability of human embryonic stem cells in Brüstle v Greenpeace C-34/10. Biotechnological inventions are subject to Directive 98/44/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions (the “Directive”). Article 6(1)…

In a judgment issued on September 28, 2010, the Court of First Instance of Paris held that a dosage regime is effectively a method of treatment and is, as such, excluded from patentability in view of Article 53c of EPC 2000. In this particular case, the use of finasteride for the treatment of androgenic alopecia…

By a judgement dated 28 September 2010, the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris held that claims 1, 2 and 3 of the French designation of Merck & Co. Ltd’s Patent EP 0 724 444 were invalid for being excluded from the scope of patentability in accordance with the provisions of Article 53(c) EPC 2000 (former Article 52  (4) EPC 1973). The court held that the invention the subject-matter of main claim 1 was only a new dosage regime ranging from 0.05 to 1 mg) of an already known compound (finasteride) in an already known therapeutic application (the treatment of hyperandrogenic conditions and especially the treatment of androgenic alopecia). A mere new dosage regime is not a second medical use but a therapeutic method excluded from patentability pursuant to Article 53  (c) EPC 2000.

In this decision the EBoA held that sexually crossing of plants is an ‘essential biological process’ within the meaning of Art. 53(b) EPC. Any claim that contains a step of sexually crossing therefore falls within the exception to patentability, whether or not additional technical measures (e.g. selecting) would be present. Only if a claim relates…

SK Telecom filed a patent application for a system and method for financial transactions, wherein a user was allowed to load money in his account on a host computer. The examining division refused to grant a patent for lack of inventive step as the invention related to a straightforward technical implementation of an administrative banking…

Vitreo’s patent application for ‘means for application of a vitreous body for the purposes of prevention and medical treatment of ophthalmic disorders’ was denied by the patent office, because the claimed invention was considered to be excluded from patentability both as a method for medical treatment of human beings or animals through therapy or surgery…

Along with a number of other relevant innovations to the Italian IP Code, last August the Italian legislator eventually passed the long awaited implementation into Italian law of Directive 44/1998/EC on biotechnological inventions (see legislative decree no. 131/2010 of 13 August 2010 here). Those who are familiar with the Italian political scene will know that…

This case concerned the issue of patentability. The Danish Patent and Trademark Office (DKPTO) refused a patent application on the grounds that the invention only consisted in an automation of a known process. This DKPTO decision was appealed before the High Court and subsequently brought before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the High…

The German Federal Court of Justice decided that a method concerning the dynamic document generation of structured documents in a client-server-environment, which is implemented by software, was not excluded from patent protection as a program for data processing systems. A method is always of technical nature if it concerns the direct interaction of elements of…