This month the Mannheim Regional Court released a decision (here) in the dispute between Daimler AG, owner of the famous Mercedes-Benz brand, and the Finnish company Nokia (also see our previous post on this blog (Another CJEU ruling on standard-essential patents and FRAND looks inevitable). The controversy centred on Nokia’s European Patent EP2981103, which the German…

The UKSC Unwired Planet & Conversant judgment[1] Background This combined appeal deals with the relationship between patent owners, whose patents are declared essential to certain technical standards, and manufacturers of mobile devices (implementers) that make use of those standards. In this case, the standard essential patents (SEPs) in issue had been declared essential to the…

Another chapter in the pemetrexed saga: Barcelona Commercial Court No. 4 has ruled on infringement in the very first case worldwide concerning pemetrexed diarginine, a salt form of pemetrexed chosen by Sandoz in the wake of the outcome of the landmark Actavis case of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (Judgment dated 12 July…

The tendency of English people to be understated in their use of language (other than on Twitter…) is often joked about with continental friends and colleagues.  For example, when an English person expresses a slight disagreement, their continental counterpart might have felt more able to be blunt and say that something is just plain wrong. …

The English Patents Court has often been regarded as a relatively favourable jurisdiction for patentees seeking interim relief in the life sciences arena. This is for various reasons, including the fact that the English Court follows the approach adopted by the House of Lords in the American Cyanamid case, in which an assessment of the…

This is a follow-up to Jan-Diederik Lindemans’ post of 18 December 2019 discussing the guidelines on legal privilege during saisie-contrefaçon adopted by the Brussels Bar Association (‘BBA’) on 21 October 2019. In a judgment of 26 March 2020, the Ghent Business Court confirmed the BBA’s position on this issue. In the 26 March 2020 judgment,…

On 17 March 2020,The Hague Court of Appeal dismissed a preliminary injunction (PI) based on alleged infringement of a Standard Essential Patent (SEP) held by a Non-Practicing Entity (NPE) based on a balancing of interests – without assessment of validity and infringement of the patent in suit, and without assessment of FRAND-related obligations. In case…

On Friday 13 March 2020, Birss J handed down a pair of judgments in the litigation between Evalve (a member of the Abbott group of companies) and Edwards Lifesciences, a veteran of UK patent litigation over the past decade. In the first judgment Evalve’s two UK patents, EP (UK) 1 408 850 and EP (UK)…

The provisions judge determined that there was a serious chance that the patent of Tomra on a self-sealing pressure release apparatus was invalid and thus did not grant a preliminary injunction to prevent marketing by Kiremko of their Strata Invicta system. Case date: 17 January 2020 Case number: C/09/580883 / KG ZA 19-941 Court: Provisions Judge of…