Actions which impinge upon the monopoly granted by an Intellectual Property right are considered infringements.
In Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., ___ F.4th ___, Nos. 2020-1715, -1716 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 2, 2021), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the University of Michigan’s technology transfer bylaws did not constitute an automatic assignment of a professor’s patent rights. This decision has important implications for the drafting…
In this decision of the Patents Court, Meade J dismissed an infringement claim brought by Promptu against Sky, on grounds that Promptu’s patent lacked inventive step. The decision is interesting as it grapples with issues of infringement where some steps of a claimed method are performed outside the UK. The decision also provides helpful guidance…
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…
In the past few years, India has produced significant case law on Standard Essential Patents (‘SEPs’), with the High Court of Delhi being the venue of several high-profile disputes. An important SEP decision in India – InterDigital v Xiaomi – was released by this court in early May 2021. The case relates to litigation occurring…
As any aficionado of American legal history will be well aware, Judge Holmes, the third most cited American legal scholar of the 20th century, was nicknamed “the Great Dissenter.” This was a tribute to the 55 dissenting opinions that he wrote during his 29 years serving at the U.S. Supreme Court. Interestingly, over the years…
Case law on contributory infringement is still very scarce in Spain. A Judgment dated 13 November 2020 offers a rare glimpse into the current stance of the influential Barcelona Court of Appeals (Section 15) on contributory infringement. Two points are worth noting: on the one hand, the Court sides with a specific interpretation of “staple…
When transporting flowers, several measures need to be taken to maintain their freshness. Floriation’s patent required regulation of the ethylene concentration in the package. Whether Royal Flora Holland had used this feature was the central theme in this decision. The provisions judge found no direct infringement and also concluded that there was no equivalency, since…
Introduction A key mechanism in patent litigation and specifically for generics is the concept of “launch at risk”. In short the concept means that a product is launched prior to the expiry of a patent despite the risk that the patent proprietor in such case could initiate infringement proceedings which often includes requests for a…
Sending a warning letter is not a pre-condition to enforce patent rights as per Turkish Law. However, considering it is a cost-effective and fast way to solve disputes, patent owners may choose to send warning letters to perceived infringers. In 2014, a global pharmaceutical company filed a patent infringement action against a Gx company asking…
The Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 15) overturned a first instance decision, making an interesting finding on the application of the “problem-solution approach”: if the revocation claimant submits that its choice of closest prior art only differs from the claimed invention in one (or more) specific feature(s), but the court finds that further differences exist…
