On 12 July 2017, the UK Supreme Court handed down a ruling which caused a shockwave to resound across the UK patent community. For more than a decade, when addressing the issue of the construction and infringement of a patent, every practitioner would have focussed on the question prescribed by Lord Hoffmann in Kirin Amgen:…

In a precedent case before the Russian Intellectual Property Court, the judges pointed out that mere registration of a generic drug long before the patent expiry may constitute a threat of infringement that is prohibited under domestic law. This position in this case may result in an extra defense against unfair registrations. On 24 April 2018,…

Whilst being wary of placing too much emphasis on statistics (the phrase “lies, damn lies and statistics” comes to mind), the authors have seen figures which suggest that the last ten years have consistently seen English patent litigation outcomes which are overall less favourable to the patentee than their opponents. That is until 2017, when…

  On March 28, 2018, the Beijing High Court issued its decision for Iwncomm v. Sony, a high profile case concerning infringement of a standard essential patent (SEP). The appellate court amended the trial judgment on some key findings, but still upheld a permanent injunction and damages of about CNY 9 million (USD 1.3 million)….

The Hague courts are not reluctant to cross borders in patent litigation. The Dutch cross-border injunction is one (in)famous example. Maybe it’s the lack of mountains providing – on the spare sunny days – clear views to foreign skies. In two recent cases The Hague District Court has embraced a pan-European approach to the threat…

Other than ex parte (evidentiary) seizures, ex parte preliminary injunctions are considered a rare phenomenon in the field of patent law in the Netherlands. The burden for obtaining an ex parte injunction is high and the allegedly infringing party could have filed a protective letter. Very recently the Dutch patent court in The Hague has…

by Steven Willis and Olivia Henry On 28 March 2018, the Court of Appeal overturned Henry Carr J’s finding that two Regeneron patents (EP (UK) 1 360 287 and EP (UK) 2 264 163) were insufficient. The judgment is an important reminder of the importance of taking the nature of the invention into account when…

Around this time last year, in Edwards Lifesciences v Boston Scientific [2017], His Honour Judge Hacon (sitting as a High Court Judge) had the opportunity to analyse two interesting aspects of UK patent law: (i) the law of implied disclosures and anticipation; and (ii) the importance of so-called secondary evidence in the evaluation of inventive…

Here at the Kluwer Patent Blog we are thrilled to have had the opportunity to interview Benjamin May on collecting evidence in patent cases and have him address issues on the power of seize and search orders, the harmonisation efforts of Directive 2004/48/EC and the future of seizures, prior to his presentation at C5’s Pharma…

On 24 November 2016, the Court of Appeal of Barcelona (Section 15) handed down a judgment in which it confirmed that “the interpretation of the scope of protection of a patent for the purposes of analysing its validity cannot be different from when its infringement is analysed”. The Judges also highlighted the relevance of the…