Jurisdiction

Read all the (latest) blogs from:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, EPC, Estonia, European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States of America

Biologics, Covid-19, Inventive step, Plausibility, Sufficiency of disclosure, United Kingdom, Validity

(Bristows)/

On 8 October 2024, Mr Justice Meade handed down judgment in BioNTech SE and Pfizer Inc., (together, BioNTech/Pfizer) v CureVac SE. Meade J found CureVac’s patents, relating to split poly(A) tails in mRNA, invalid for obviousness and insufficiency due to (i) lack of plausibility and (ii) because the purported technical effect does not in fact…

(Compulsory) license, Australia, Injunction, Pharmaceutical patent

, , (Clayton Utz)/ /1 Comment

On 18 September 2024, the Honourable Justice Jackman, in his capacity as a Deputy President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), granted Sandoz a licence pursuant to section 223(9) of the Patents Act 1990 (Cth) (Act).  In doing so, his Honour set aside an earlier, 2019 decision, in which the Commissioner of Patents (Commissioner) had also…

Brazil, FRAND, Patents, SEP

(City, University of London), (University of São Paulo), and (Universidade Católica Portuguesa)/

Brazil is an increasingly relevant venue for litigation involving standard essential patents (SEPs). As a top-5 market in the world for consumer electronics and the most performing economy in Latin America, Brazil is indeed an important country for players in tech. Think of X (formerly “Twitter”), which has recently been banned in Brazil for failing…

EPC, EPO, EPO Decision, Patents

, , (Reddie & Grose LLP)/ /5 Comments

The recently released judgment in J1/24 (relating to EP 3660979B1), from the Legal Board of Appeal at the European Patent Office (EPO) is a divisive judgment, which could potentially have far-reaching implications. Existing legislation ignored/overturned by J1/24 The European Patent Convention is clear that a divisional application must be filed from a pending parent application,…

Enforcement, Entitlement, France

(Dhenne Avocats)/

In an important decision rendered on 24 April 2024, the Commercial Chamber of the Cour de cassation (i.e., French Supreme Court) ruled that the assignment of a patent is not enforceable against third parties if it is not registered, but that the regularization of this situation during the infringement proceedings allows covering all acts of…

Case Law, European Union, Inventive step, Prior art

(Hoffmann Eitle)/ /1 Comment

When interpreting a patent claim, the person skilled in the art does not apply a philological understanding, but rather determines the technical meaning of the terms used with the aid of the description and the drawings. From the function of the individual features in the context of the patent claim as a whole, it must…

France, Pharmaceutical patent

(Dhenne Avocats)/

While the patentability of further medical use claim defined by a dosage regimen used to be ruled out, the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal has accepted them since decision G 2/08 in 2010. This patentability was also strongly debated before the French Courts, even after G 2/08, before being eventually recognized, although the interpretation of…

Case Law, European Union, Infringement

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

In a second case between DexCom and Abbott, DexCom claimed against Abbott for infringement of a divisional patent by its glucose monitoring system. However, Abbott, in a similar fashion as with the parent patent, also counterclaimed for revocation of the divisional patent. Case date: 31 July 2024 Case number: CFI 233/2023547520/20232178/2024 Court: UPC Local divisions of the…

(Indirect) infringement, EPC, Infringement, Injunction, Technology, Unitary Patent, UPC, Validity

(Bristows)/

On 27 August 2024, the Munich Local Division awarded a preliminary injunction (‘PI’) in an action brought by Hand Held Products against Scandit for infringement of EP3866051 (“Mobile computer configured to read multiple decodable indicia”) in relation to Scandit’s ‘Data Capture SDK’ software (Order UPC_CFI_74/2024). The Court held that Scandit’s software development kit (SDK) more…