The High Court (Arnold J.) decided to refer further questions on the interpretation of Article 3 of the SPC Regulation to the CJEU,, particularly in relation to the Article 3(a) requirement that “the product is protected by a basic patent in force”, suggesting an interpretation which focuses on the “inventive concept” of the patent rather…
The Court of Appeal held that while structural approaches for determining obviousness (with reference to the Pozzoli test), are useful, the importance of the statutory test cannot be undermined. The ultimate question that the Court must address is whether it was obvious to the skilled but unimaginative addressee to make a product or carry out…
Co-authored by Gemma Wooden Environmental Recycling Technologies Plc v Upcycle Holdings Ltd [2013] EWPCC 4 – 5 February 2013 Summary This decision of the UK Patents County Court provides insight into the differences between UK and EPO practice. It demonstrates a possibly more lenient approach to amendments based solely on the drawings and confirms that…
On 12 February I posted the first of two notes on the forthcoming joint FRAND trial arising out of actions between IPCom and Nokia (Claim No: HC 10 C01233) and HTC and IPCom (Claim HC 11 C02064), both in relation to IPCom’s European Patent EP 1,841,268 (the ‘268). In the first posting I concentrated on…
FRAND licensing terms (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) and their impact upon electronics and telecommunications patent litigation is fast becoming a hot topic amongst the patent blogs. One case that has so far slipped under the radar of many commentators is the forthcoming Nokia/HTC/IPCom FRAND trial before the High Court of England and Wales. The trial,…
As has been well publicised, the end of 2012 was a time of considerable progress in the long history of the Unitary patent and Unified Patent Court (“UPC”) dossier, culminating in adoption of the Unitary Patent Regulation 1257/2012 and its accompanying Language Regulation 1260/2012. But what next? Built into the Unitary Patent Regulation is a…
Hearings in the UK’s highest Court concerning patents are rare. In fact, since the Supreme Court was established in place of the House of Lords in October 2009, there has only been one substantive decision namely the Eli Lilly v Human Genome Sciences case. Last week the Supreme Court heard its second patents case, Schütz…
The applicability of the obvious to try question has been a thorny issue in UK patent law for some time, and the desire for a party seeking invalidity to apply this test has pervaded many recent pharmaceutical patent cases in the UK, particularly where the patent claims a single enantiomer and the prior art indicates…
Note on High Court, 27 November 2012, Actavis/Eli Lilly Introduction Last year the English Supreme Court in a copyright case held that there is no doubt that the modern trend is in favour of the enforcement of foreign IP rights and that there are no issues of policy which militate against it nor is there…
Liversidge v (1) Owen Mumford Limited (2) Abbott Laboratories Limited In April 2011, the claimant commenced patent infringement proceedings in the UK Patents County Court (“PCC”) against the defendants in respect of European Patent No. 2067496 entitled “Medical Injector”. The defendants denied infringement and counterclaimed invalidity. Background The claimant filed a patent application for a…
