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The Spanish company Fractus sued Xiaomi and their distributors for infringement of their patent on a monopole antenna with a radiation arm that is shaped as a space-filling curve. However, the provisions judge declared that the claim of the patent should be interpreted narrowly on the basis of the prosecution history and on the basis…
Patent Attorneys like myself are not known for their love of excitement. For example, I like reading lists. One regrettably exciting item that appears to have slipped off the ‘things to look out for in 2020’ lists that I have seen is the outcome of the constitutional complaints against the EPO in Germany. The outcome…
The debate over standard-essential patents (SEPs) is typically distinguished as much by concerns over competition than issues of patent law per se. Erixon argues: ‘…SEP disputes are less concerned about the rights and boundaries of patents, and more about antitrust limits to market behavior.’ At the European level EU institutions acknowledge the policy concern that…
Barcelona Commercial Courts have a well-deserved reputation for being dynamic and creative. Not surprisingly, it was Judge Ferrándiz, already retired from the Supreme Court, who back in 1993, when he was sitting at Section 15 of the Court of Appeal of Barcelona, had the idea of specializing that Section on a small number of commercial…
The December issue 4|2019 of the journal epi Information contains four interesting contributions to the discussion on the novelty test for sub-ranges as used by the EPO. The EPO has a special novelty test to determine whether a claimed numerical sub-range of a known broad range is novel over the known range. A sub-range must…
President António Campinos of the European Patent Office, the Chair of the EPO Unitary Patent Select Committee and members of the UPC Preparatory Committee met today to discuss the implementation of the Unitary Patent package. According to an EPO report, the meeting “came after the judge in charge of a complaint that had been lodged…
A post on the new guidelines for examination of the European Patent Office tops the list of most popular articles of the Kluwer Patent Blog in 2019. The enduring social problems at the EPO led to a series of well read blogposts as well; the leadership change at the organisation has unfortunately not led to…
In a thorough decision, Barcelona Commercial Court (Section 15) clarifies important findings on novelty, inventive step and claim construction. A technical feature disclosed in the prior art will not anticipate an identical feature if the exact same functionality is not described in the prior art, even if it is common ground that the prior art’s…
Holding bench trial instead of jury trial deprived SEP owner Ericsson of Seventh Amendment rights because trial was held to determine compensatory relief for mobile device maker TCL’s past infringement. Swedish telecommunications company Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and its U.S. subsidiary Ericsson Inc. (together, “Ericsson”) should have been given a jury trial instead of a bench…
As was rightly noted on this blog, the skilled person’s “hope” of solving the objective technical problem using the means that led to the (later claimed) invention, has disappeared from the Guidelines for Examination. What we are left with is the (perhaps) more objective “expectation of some improvement or advantage (see T/83)”. Interestingly, this expectation…
