The readers will recall that on 18 July 2013, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) handed down its controversial judgment in case C‑414/11 Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd, Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH v. DEMO Anonimos Viomikhaniki kai Emporiki Etairia Farmakon. In this judgment the ECJ, making a 180º twist in relation to the criteria endorsed in Opinion…
The Court of Appeal of Burgos dismissed the appeal against the Judgment of the Provincial Court of Burgos, which upheld a patent for a pharmaceutical composition and its use, despite the fact that clinical trials regarding the patented composition and the patented use were mentioned in the prior art. The full summary of this case…
One of the “co-lateral” damages expected from the latest Pixar Films’ type of productions coming from the European Commission (the European patent with unitary effect and the Unified Patent Court (“UPC”) fostered by the Commission behind the scenes) is the increase of patent applications filed before national patent offices. Stakeholders are growing concerned that the…
As the readers may know, what is referred to as a “protective writ” is an anticipatory defensive mechanism that a person that fears to be sued for patent infringement may use in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium to put Courts on notice of the non-infringement arguments relied on by the hypothetical future…
Spanish Courts have recently decided two interesting cases that show that patent litigation is not the exclusive realm of big pharma or high tech. Patent litigation extends its tentacles to quotidian cooking tools that we and / or our most significant others use day after day in the kitchen. The first judgment, handed down by…
A long time has already passed since 23 October 2001, when Judge Jacob ordered a preliminary injunction preventing the launch of the first paroxetine generics in England. To cut a long story short, the rationale was that, if there is an obstacle blocking your way into the “garden”, you have to clear the way before…
On 10 June 2013 the Court of Appeal of Barcelona handed down a very interesting decision that appears to have written the penultimate word in the long saga of decisions discussing the meaning of “imminence.” As discussed in other blogs, although the so-called “Enforcement Directive” (Directive 2004/48/EC) was meant to strengthen the protection of intellectual…
When a preliminary injunction is lifted, the debate arises regarding the amount of damages that the company affected by the preliminary injunction may claim against the applicant. A recent judgment of 6 May 2013 from Commercial Court number 6 of Barcelona has shed some light on this topic. The background of the case can be…
One of the remedies introduced by Directive EC 2004/48, of 29 April 2004, was preliminary injunctions aimed at prohibiting acts of infringement when there are indicia indicating that an act of infringement may be “imminent.” It is the nature of preliminary injunctions, which require an element of urgency, that patentees may be required to prove…
One of the topics hotly discussed within the intellectual property family over the last few years is whether or not “transit” is an act of infringement. Since, unlike patent law, trademark law is already harmonised at the EU level, many cases have reached the ECJ, which has generated a saga of judgments that does not…
