Prior art that requires fundamental reconfiguration of the disclosed solution to end up with something falling under the scope of protection of a claim cannot normally render the claimed subject matter obvious. Case date: 17 January 2019 Case number: X ZR 8/17 Court: Federal Court of Justice of Germany A full summary of this case has been…
A jury’s verdict that snowmobile frame patents asserted against Arctic Cat were indefinite and invalid as anticipated or obvious was supported by substantial evidence. A federal district court correctly upheld a jury verdict invalidating two Bombardier Recreational Products Inc. snowmobile frame patents because substantial evidence supported the jury’s findings that Bombardier’s patent related to rider…
A claim defining a compound as having a certain purity would lack novelty over a prior art disclosure describing the same compound only if the prior art disclosed the claimed purity at least implicitly, for example by way of a method for preparing said compound, the method inevitably resulting in the claimed purity. Such a…
The PTAB improperly found that the patent is unpatentable in view of the prior art. Concluding that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board improperly construed certain claims in a patent for memory system circuits owned by Innovative Memory Systems, Inc. in an inter partes review filed by Micron Technology, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals…
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….
A further interesting decision handed down by the Judges of the English Patents Court prior to the Easter break was a judgment from Nugee J concerning proceedings between E. Mishan and Hozelock relating to a UK patent and European patent, both entitled “Expandable Hose Assembly”. E. Mishan (trading as Emson) claimed that Hozelock’s expandable garden…
Last week the Board of Appeal issued a decision holding that Google’s patent application 04784004.6 was unallowable on the ground of lack of inventive step. Amongst other things, the decision contains useful guidance relevant to applications containing a mixture of technical and non-technical subject matter. The take-homes from the decision are as follows: 1. A…
Relevant prior art may prove not to be useful as a starting point for an attack on inventive step if the prior art teaching is negated by later studies before the effective date of the patent claims. In such a case, the skilled person would not have had an expectation of success. Case date:16 January…
A Markush claim is a type of claim commonly used in chemical and pharmaceutical fields. On December 20, 2017, in Beijing Winsunny Harmony Science & Technology Co., Ltd. v. Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd, (“Daiichi Sankyo Case”), the Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) resolved a long standing-split among Chinese courts regarding the interpretation and amendment of Markush…
Suppose you are a (patent) attorney in a pharmaceutical company and want to advise your company how to best protect the results of a clinical trial designed to find out the best possible treatment regimen of a certain known and approved drug X. The researchers of your company have devised and been allowed to conduct…
