France
Too natural to be patent-eligible
Tribunal de grande instance de Paris, 3rd chamber, 1st section, 3 July 2014, Evinerude v. Philippe Giraudeau and Aair Lichens While the US decisions in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories Inc. and Myriad Genetics led the USPTO to issue new guidelines to the attention of examiners on the procedure for subject matter eligibility analysis of claims reciting or involving “interalia” laws of nature and…
The EU Patent Package – Where does Europe stand End of June 2014?
1 Introduction Reports that say there’s — that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But…
Patent revocation actions in France: mind the slot!
Until recently, third parties had not to worry about the date at which they would initiate a patent revocation action in France. However, nowadays, this issue is a hot topic in France. The origin of the current controversy is not recent as it lies in statute № 2008-561 of 17 June 2008 which shortened to 5 years…
Vetrotech v. Interver, Court of Cassation of France, 13 February 2013
The French Supreme Court condemned a patentee’s undue use of an evidentiary measure (infringement seizure, “saisie-contrefaçon”) as a way to obtain information from a competitor, specifically information relating to the manufacturing processes of its direct competitor, beyond the scope of the lawsuit (“fishing expedition”). The full summary of this case has been posted on Kluwer…
Elan Pharma v. Ethypharm, District Court Paris (Tribunal de Grande Instance Paris), 21 December 2012
The Paris District Court clarified its interpretation of Article 123 EPC regarding disclaimer allowability and allowed a disclaimer restoring novelty of a patent. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.Kluweriplaw.com .
Amendments, Chemical Engineering, Extension of subject matter, Extent of Protection, France, Scope of protection
Adding is limiting
Syngenta Limited (hereinafter referred to as “Syngenta”), a company governed by the laws of England and Wales, is the holder of European patent No. 0 382 375 entitled “Fungicides”. On 28 September 2009, it submitted to the Institut national de la propriété industrielle (INPI; French Industrial Property Office) a request for limitation of a claim of the French designation of…
Omnipharm Limited / SAS Merial, Court of Appeal Paris (Cour d'appel Paris), 17 February 2012
The Paris Court of Appeal clarified the interest of a potential competitor to seek the revocation of a patent. It was particularly unclear whether any competitor, current or potential, could have a legitimate interest in the form of a “clear the path” approach. However, in this case the Court held that Omnipharm had no legitimate…
A saisie-contrefaçon is not a fishing expedition
The French saisie-contrefaçon is known to be an extremely powerful and effective tool to collect evidence of infringement of a patent (as of any other intellectual property right, see “Saisie-contrefaçon” on Wikipedia and also P. Véron et alii, Saisie-contrefaçon, Paris, Dalloz Action, 3rd ed. 2013-2014). It is a procedure that allows to request and obtain from…
A poor consolation
On 15 January 2013, the French Cour de cassation, in the litigation between the Novartis companies and the Actavis companies about valsartan, drew the consequences of the 9 February 2012 order rendered by the CJEU in the frame of a parallel litigation in the United Kingdom. As already explained in a previous post, the company governed by the laws…