Even though subject to a confidentiality agreement an internal newsletter may be deemed publicly available if the addressees would not consider the newsletter to be covered by the confidentiality agreement. Case date: 21 November 2018 Case number: C/09/472888 / HA ZA 14-1019 Court: District Court of The Hague A full summary of this case has been published on…
The court solved the question of inventive step using the problem-solution approach, defining the objective technical problem without including a pointer to the solution of the problem. This, however, did not help the patentee, since the solution to the problem was already to be found in the common general knowledge and was used in similar…
The Court of Appeal of the Hague confirmed that a technical effect may only be cooroborated by post-filed data if it is sufficiently plausible from the description. Further, extension of the process (counter)claim at a late stage in the proceedings was not permitted as it conflicts with efficient case management. Case date:11 December 2018 Case…
For establishing inventive step it is not necessary that the prior art contains a pointer for combination, only that in the relevant prior art an incentive was present to combine the prior art. Case date: 27 November 2018 Case number: C/09/534649/HA ZA 17-651C/09/533643/HA ZA 17-599200.237.828/01 Court: Court of Appeal of The Hague A full summary of…
In a recent decision The Hague Court of Appeal mixes a cocktail of SPC case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The ingredients: 1/3 Sanofi, 1/3 Boehringer and 1/3 Gilead and a sniff of Georgetown. Shake well with the skilled person’s common general knowledge and the basic patent’s description (warning: do…
The Court confirmed that a District court, not specialised in patent matters, does have relative jurisdiction to decide a motion to produce exhibits for determining patent infringement. In order to positively decide a motion to produce exhibits, (threat of) infringement should be made plausible, but the threshold for plausibility is relatively low. Further, technical details…
(Corrected) The American Food Drug Administration (FDA) will follow the European Medicines Agency from London to Amsterdam because of the Brexit. That is clear from a report on the website of the FDA, describing its international activities. “Since the first foreign office opened in Beijing in November of 2008, FDA’s international presence has grown to…
The District Court of the Hague granted a provisional injunction against Sandoz’ generic darunavir product. As it was already offered in the G-standard, price erosion was an imminent danger for which a provisional injunction was warranted, and the SPC appeared to be valid having been held so in the parallell procedure before the UK court….
The Hague courts are not reluctant to cross borders in patent litigation. The Dutch cross-border injunction is one (in)famous example. Maybe it’s the lack of mountains providing – on the spare sunny days – clear views to foreign skies. In two recent cases The Hague District Court has embraced a pan-European approach to the threat…
Yesterday, 25 April 2018, AG Wathelet has handed down his opinion in the Teva v Gilead reference (Case C-121/17) suggesting that the question should be answered as follows: “The fact that a substance or combination of substances falls within the scope of protection of the basic patent is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for…
