When interpreting a patent claim, the person skilled in the art does not apply a philological understanding, but rather determines the technical meaning of the terms used with the aid of the description and the drawings. From the function of the individual features in the context of the patent claim as a whole, it must…
Substantial evidence supported a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision finding the challenged claims were obvious. A PTAB decision finding that Sony Interactive Entertainment had shown that a Bot M8’s patent directed to a video game authentication system was obvious over prior art has been affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the…
On 18 July 2023, the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in Vernacare Limited v Moulded Fibre Products Limited [2023] EWCA Civ 841, an appeal from the decision of Nicholas Caddick QC (sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court). The Court of Appeal, with Sir Christopher Floyd giving…
The combination of two well-known high blood pressure medicines did not result in unexpected patient benefits. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board denying as obvious over prior art an application to patent a method of co-administering two well-known antihypertensive agents to…
His Honour Judge Hacon handed down judgment in AutoStore v Ocado on 30 March 2023. The case was atypical in that it had a split trial: the first part of the trial considered whether AutoStore’s patents (EP 794 and EP 027) were rendered invalid by prior disclosures made in Russia, the second part considered “technical…
Nokia v Oppo [2023] EWHC 23 (Pat) In a new development in the global dispute between Nokia and Oppo that spans seven jurisdictions across Europe and Asia, Mr Justice Meade of the English Patents Court has found that smartphone manufacturer Oppo infringes valid and standard essential Nokia 4G/5G patent EP2981103 on an “allocation of preamble…
It has long been held that a prior art disclosure of a chemical compound would disclose this chemical compound in all grades of purity and that novelty could only be achieved if the claimed level of purity could not be reached in the prior art. However, in the current decision the view that such an…
A nullity plaintiff who argues in the statement of claim that the subject-matter of a subordinate claim is obvious in the light of a specific prior art document, is in principle not obliged to submit further prior art documents until a deviating preliminary opinion of the Federal Patent Court if the court has pointed out…
As readers will be well aware, one of the points on which the courts of various European countries diverge, is whether or not the prosecution history of the patent at hand may be taken into account to interpret its scope of protection. For example, the UK Supreme Court, in its landmark judgment of 12 July…
Petitioner expert testimony in inter partes review of a surgical tool patent was more credible than patent owner’s expert that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine asserted prior art and would have had a reasonable expectation of success in do so. There was substantial evidence to support the Patent…
