On 1 April 2020, the Court of Appeal, led by Floyd LJ, handed down judgment concerning the strike out of an Arrow declaration in litigation between Mexichem and Honeywell. Honeywell owns six patents that focus on the use of two refrigerants (‘ze’ and ‘yf’) in mobile air-conditioning systems (“MACs”), often used in cars, with a…
On 17 March 2020,The Hague Court of Appeal dismissed a preliminary injunction (PI) based on alleged infringement of a Standard Essential Patent (SEP) held by a Non-Practicing Entity (NPE) based on a balancing of interests – without assessment of validity and infringement of the patent in suit, and without assessment of FRAND-related obligations. In case…
By Hetti Hilge/Dr. Simon Klopschinski Today the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) has declared the German law ratifying the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC Agreement) to be unconstitutional and void (see here). On 31 March 2017 a private person filed with the FCC a constitutional complaint against the German act of parliament approving…
On Friday 13 March 2020, Birss J handed down a pair of judgments in the litigation between Evalve (a member of the Abbott group of companies) and Edwards Lifesciences, a veteran of UK patent litigation over the past decade. In the first judgment Evalve’s two UK patents, EP (UK) 1 408 850 and EP (UK)…
On 5 December 2019, the IP Tribunal of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) handed down two decisions in which – in a first for China, the SPC heard and decided on both the patent validity and infringement disputes in one consolidated proceeding. Background The two actions arose out of a patent infringement dispute between the…
On 9 October 2019, the Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal against the finding that a patent directed towards ceramic compounds was sufficient and allowed two procedural appeals on issues of liability. Anan Kasei and Rhodia (“Rhodia”) are respectively the proprietor and exclusive licensee of a patent for ceric oxide compounds for use in catalytic…
The Bundesgerichtshof (German Federal Court of Justice, BGH) clarified the scope and limits of a prior use right of a manufacturer and supplier of components of a patented device (BGH, judgment of 14 May 2019, X ZR 95/18 – Schutzverkleidung). Under German patent law, a patent has no effect with respect to a party who…
While the numerous recent court decisions may suggest so, the ‘F’ in FRAND does not stand for ‘Fashionable’. The reader of this blog, well-informed in patent matters, will know by heart what this acronym spells out. He (or, I say once and for all, she)1 will also know that, next to technical intricacies of assessing…
Among the flurry of pre-summer vacation judgments coming from the Patents Court is one from Mr Justice Birss (17 July 2019), concerning the validity of Hoffman-La Roche’s patent EP (UK) 2 007 809. EP’809 is a formulation patent for the monoclonal antibody vedolizumab, marketed as Entyvio® and used to treat ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease….
Pemetrexed, yet again: last Wednesday the District Court of The Hague, swimming against the current and after a deep dive in the prosecution file, decided that Fresenius did not infringe Eli Lilly’s ‘pemetrexed disodium’ patent with a generic product that does not contain pemetrexed disodium, not even by equivalence. The basic facts of the widespread…
