Now that we are less than one month away from implementation of the First-Inventor-To-File provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA), stakeholders are considering whether to file new patent applications now, to secure examination under the current First-To-Invent patent system, or wait until March 16, 2013, so that the applications will be governed by the…
The Technical Board of Appeal ruled that a claim of an opposed patent was anticipated by the publication of a divisional of that same patent. Because the claim contained an intermediate generalization with respect to the priority document, the claim was not entitled to priority. The divisional was however entitled to claim priority for the…
The Borgarting Court of Appeal overturned the district court decision which revoked the patents in suit for lack of inventive step. The Court held that even if oxycodone had been known and used to treat pain as an alternative to morphine, the skilled person could not have predicted that a controlled release formulation with oxycodone…
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…
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…
I. Priority of Invention II. Proving Conception and Reduction to Practice III. Sample Laboratory Notebook IV. Instructions For Maintaining Laboratory Notebook V. Instructions for Maintaining Inventory of Laboratory Notebooks I. PRIORITY OF INVENTION In accordance the United States patent statute, only the “first inventor” of the claimed invention is entitled to a patent for that…
