Following the issuance of G 2/21 last year, we asked whether the plausibility elephant had left the room. Our Kluwer colleague and friend Miquel Montañá discussed this issue more recently here. Several decisions have meanwhile been issued applying the new “test” in G2/21, the lucidity of which may have reminded readers of the oracle of…

Video conferences will become the default format of oral opposition proceedings in at the European Patent Office as of 2023. Only under certain circumstances, and when the opposition division permits it, will oral proceedings in opposition be conducted in person. A decision to that effect was announced yesterday, a week after the publication of the final…

In a case where the patent is not opposed in its entirety, the opposition being directed at certain claims only, and where the Opposition Division decides that all of the proprietor’s requests in relation to the opposed claims must fail, only the unopposed claims, which are not part of any opposition proceedings, are left standing….

The PACTE law of May 22nd [1] introduced new opposition proceedings against French patents before the French PTO. A draft amendment to the Intellectual Property Code (hereinafter referred to as “IPC”) is currently under consideration in order to specify the modalities of proceedings (deadlines, costs, remedies, etc.). This draft is submitted for consultation to representatives…

The EPO’s Problem-Solution-Approach is, on the face of it, simple and widely applied also in the national jurisprudence of the EPC member states. It starts with the determination of a “closest prior art document” (CPAD) which is to serve as the starting point of the further analysis. It is then evaluated which technical differences exist…

The number of inventive step attacks in opposition procedures at the European Patent Office may be constrained in the future due to a recent change in the EPO Guidelines. According to David Brophy, partner at FRKelly, the change will improve efficiency, although the restrictions may also open up a new avenue for criticising decisions on…

T0969/14 is the latest in a long line of decisions which make it clear that the EPO Boards of appeal will not accept late filed requests which could have been filed in first instance proceedings, whether or not the submission of such requests might be perceived as a procedural abuse. One of the consequences of…

The duration of proceedings before the Boards of Appeal (BoA) currently is the EPO’s biggest problem in regard to speed. According to the latest Annual Report by the Boards of Appeal, the average length of inter partes proceedings is 37 months (up 1 month from 2015), i.e. more than three years. In 2016, two appeals…

European patent attorneys should make a joint effort and gather data to assess the impact of procedural  issues on opposition procedures at the European Patent Office and, in the future, on  decisions of the Unified Patent Court. Michael Wallinger, partner of law firm WRST, proposed this at the annual meeting of the European Patent Litigators…

Case reported and summarised by Gregory Bacon, Bristows LLP The UK does not operate a system of automatically staying proceedings which concern validity of a European patent where there are ongoing opposition proceedings at the EPO. Nevertheless, the Court retains discretion to stay such proceedings, and a recent judgment of Mrs Justice Rose on 18…