by Jan Pot and Ruprecht Hermans MSD’s European Patent for treating baldness, EP 0 724 444 (‘EP 444’), has been the subject of a number of (in)validity decisions throughout Europe, with differing outcomes. The Dutch chapter in this saga is a decision of the District Court The Hague, which holds that – contrary to the…
Before diving into this year’s Oktoberfest with the Munich IP community, colleague contributor Thorsten Bausch summarized the German Federal Court of Justice’s case law of Summer 2014. As the days of raising beer mugs and polka dancing come to an end in Munich, so does the Dutch Summer (finally). Time for an overview of what…
The PI judge in the District Court of The Hague held that under certain circumstances, provisional cross-border jurisdiction can be derived from art. 31 Regulation (EC) 44/2001, which would require a “real connecting link” between the sought measures and the jurisdiction of a contracting state (ECJ C-391/95, Van Uden/Decoline). However, in the present case there…
The PI judge in the District Court of The Hague held that the processes used to manufacture the generic products in dispute did not fall within the invoked patents’ scope of protection, and particularly that these did not comprise equivalent measures, because the allegedly equivalent substances had significantly different chemical compositions and functionality. Finding the…
The Court of Appeal held that the duty to compensate the successful party’s legal costs in intellectual property proceedings, pursuant to Art. 14 of the Enforcement directive, also applies to invalidity claims, counterclaims and defenses by the alleged infringing party threatened with patent enforcement. To deny such compensation in respect of nullity claims or defenses…
Introduction The Court of Justice of the European Union last year delivered a decision on the impact of the GAT/LuK decision on jurisdiction in preliminary infringement proceedings (Solvay/Honeywell). As the case below is continuing its way through the Dutch courts, the frequency of publications trying to make sense of the 2012 CJEU decision come down…
Almost one year ago the European Court of Justice (CJEU) “clarified” the law on supplementary protection certificates. On November 24, 2011 it rendered its verdict in the “Medeva” case (C-322-10). One should not forget that “Georgetown” (C -422/10) was rendered on the same day and only one day later, the Yeda (C-518/10), Queensland (C-630/10) and…
The Court of Appeal held that Roche c.s. infringed the patent. Test results regarding the allegedly infringing product were admitted as evidence because Roche’s arguments were held insufficient to render these tests unreliable. Furthermore, the court ruled that it has jurisdiction to decide on the infringement in Germany based on Art. 24 EC 44/2001, because…
The Court decided it has jurisdiction in preliminary proceedings in respect of the alleged unlawful act by a Dutch company, consisting of facilitating – as the holder of a marketing authorization – its Portuguese fellow subsidiary to infringe the Portuguese part of a European patent and corresponding SPC in Portugal, based on Article 31 EC…
The interesting six-jurisdiction patent case between two of the world’s leading enzyme manufacturers, the Danish companies Danisco A/S (now part of DuPont) and Novozymes A/S has already been subject to earlier blogs both here and several times on EPLAW and PatLit. To recap the story briefly, Novozymes started the proceedings by applying for a preliminary…
