Novelty is a requirement for patentability. An invention is not new and therefore not patentable if it was known to the public (disclosed in the prior art) before the filing date of the patent application, or, if the application claims priority of an earlier patent application, before the priority date.
In this case the Court held that a previous patent application and other scientific publications which did not disclose the invention in a manner sufficiently complete for it to be carried out by a person skilled in the art, could not influence the novelty of the invention for which that patent application was later filed….
Do we need a Community Patent? Do we need a European Patent Litigation System? Or does the current fragmented system have a hidden wisdom behind it? Judge for yourself!
This judgement is one of many issued in the worldwide litigation pending between Novartis and Johnson & Johnson concerning Novartis’ patent for ophthalmically compatible extended wear contact lenses. The decision contains a recapitulation of all possible grounds for invalidity of a patent. The Court rejected the detailed claims of invalidity for lack of sufficiency, dealt…
The Thessaloniki Court of Appeal held in nullity proceedings that the patent, covering ornamental light devices, lacked both novelty and inventive step. The patented subject matter was found to be known in the market and circulating in trade prior to the date of filing the application for patent protection. A full summary of this case…
The Appellant had obtained both utility model and patent protection for a mechanical invention. The Defendant argued that the subject matter of both rights did not fulfil the novelty requirement, because it had been disclosed to the public by demonstrations of the invention to both individual persons and corporate entities prior to the priority date….
In the 30 June 2010 decision, the Cour d’Appel of Paris stated how the novelty of an invention, namely a pharmaceutical compound having a high degree of purity, should be assessed.
The Danish Supreme Court dismissed Meyn’s claim against Linco and declared Meyn’s patent invalid.
In this case, the Court of Appeal of Paris affirmed a judgement of the Court of First Instance of Paris holding that a product “may not acquire novelty simply because it is prepared in a purer form”. The Court decided that “the parameters that are not inherent to the chemical compound itself, but rather are…
Claim 1 of the opposed patent had a limitation to a range of values with a lower bound that was slightly higher than disclosed in the priority document. The Board refused to recognize priority. As the priority document was prior art, the claim lacked novelty. The proprietor filed an auxiliary request wherein protection at the…
Separating and testing the two enantiomers of a chiral molecule having an already-known therapeutic effect in order to identify the active enantiomer, evaluating its specific therapeutic effect and finally recommending, through the patent, its use for an identical but better-quality therapeutic effect, involves no inventive step.
