While the numerous recent court decisions may suggest so, the ‘F’ in FRAND does not stand for ‘Fashionable’. The reader of this blog, well-informed in patent matters, will know by heart what this acronym spells out. He (or, I say once and for all, she)1 will also know that, next to technical intricacies of assessing…
The holder of a standard essential patent (SEP) should first notify the alleged infringer of the SEP, following which the alleged infringer should inform the patent holder of its willingness to take a licence. Then, said licence needs to be offered on FRAND terms. These steps are guidelines for good faith negotiations between the parties….
The scope of a patent is to be interpreted according to Art. 69 EPC and the Protocol. If the literal text is limiting, the question is how the skilled person would understand this limitation. If the limiting wording is due to a technical consideration, the limitation may be considered differently from when the limitation can…
One of the worst nightmares or, in a few cases, real events in a patent professional’s life is when he/she realizes that an important term has inadvertently been missed and the usual means of term extension are no longer available. What then? Will the hardship of the applicable European or national statute inevitably hit you?…
A patent that is limited during the course of the proceedings (even after the pleadings) is held to have been so limited ab initio if the limitation is duly registered. When a European patent is granted and validated, an existing national patent loses its effect only for the invention claimed in the European patent. The…
The Court held that a selection invention is inventive if the compound of the selection offers surprisingly advantageous or improved properties over the prior art compounds. These properties should already be plausible from the patent application as filed. Further, a selection invention would be obvious to the skilled person if they would assume a neutral…
Pemetrexed, yet again: last Wednesday the District Court of The Hague, swimming against the current and after a deep dive in the prosecution file, decided that Fresenius did not infringe Eli Lilly’s ‘pemetrexed disodium’ patent with a generic product that does not contain pemetrexed disodium, not even by equivalence. The basic facts of the widespread…
The focus in The Netherlands on the option of compounding medicines as a means to circumvent the use of (expensive) authorised medicinal products of pharmaceutical companies and to pressurize them into lowering their prices, is confusing and possibly misleading and not necessarily good for patients. Attorney-at-law Hanneke Later-Nijland, also a trained pharmacist and a former…
Although at first instance the patent was found to lack inventive step without using the problem-and-solution approach, the use of the PSA by the Court of Appeal did not make a difference to the outcome in the present case. Case date: 28 May 2019 Case number: 200.222.873/01 Court: Court of Appeal of The Hague A full…
The Court held that the CJEU decision in the Bericarp case, where it was decided that for invalidity procedures no reimbursement of full litigation costs applies, did apply to invalidity proceedings if these did not contain an enforcement procedure. Case number: 26 March 2019 Case date: 200.230.424/01C/09/509050 / HA ZA 16-435 Court: Court of Appeal of…
