Around this time last year, in Edwards Lifesciences v Boston Scientific [2017], His Honour Judge Hacon (sitting as a High Court Judge) had the opportunity to analyse two interesting aspects of UK patent law: (i) the law of implied disclosures and anticipation; and (ii) the importance of so-called secondary evidence in the evaluation of inventive…

Patent lawyers in the UK have spent the last three months pondering, debating and at times indulging in an element of despair (to put it mildly) about what might be the impact of the judgment of the Supreme Court in Actavis v Eli Lilly [2017] UKSC 48 on issues of validity (see here). Today they…

Although there is a well-known crime novel by James M. Cain saying the contrary, the postman does not always ring twice, particularly not in patent nullity proceedings when it comes to the service of the complaint under the Hague Convention. Recently, two patents were declared null and void in Switzerland. In both proceedings the revocation…

by Chloe Dickson On 30 November 2016 the Court of Appeal handed down judgment in the latest chapter of the Hospira v Genentech epic surrounding Genentech’s blockbuster drug trastuzumab (Herceptin®) (Hospira v Genentech [2016] EWCA Civ 1185). This instalment concerned a patent for use of the antibody trastuzumab in combination with a traditional chemotherapeutic agent,…

On 21 October 2016, the Federal Court of Australia handed down its judgment in the case of Apotex Pty Ltd v Warner-Lambert Company LLC (No 2) [2016] FCA 1238 (FCA Judgment).  Justice John Nicholas found in favour of Warner-Lambert, both upholding the validity of its patent claims and granting final injunctions restraining infringement by Apotex….

by Steven Willis Yesterday, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in Idenix v Gilead [2016] EWCA Civ 1089, a dispute involving SOVALDI® (sofosbuvir), which is sold by Gilead as a treatment for chronic hepatitis C infection in adults. At first instance, Arnold J held (in an epic 621 paragraph judgment) that Idenix’s Patent…

Media attention at the English High Court today may have been focussed on the Article 50 challenge but for many patent lawyers operating in the life sciences sector, of equal or greater importance was the handing down of the long-awaited judgment in the Lyrica appeal. To recap briefly, Pfizer was the owner of a patent…

The German Federal Court of Justice (FCJ) recently issued a second decision in a nullity lawsuit revolving around a windscreen for vehicles (Fahrzeugscheibe II, X ZR 41/14). While the first decision dealt with interesting questions regarding the transferability of the right to priority, the second one treads more conventional paths, yet it still contains a…

by Rachel Mumby Bexsero, the Meningitis B vaccine marketed by GSK, has been the subject of many newspaper headlines in the UK over the last year, with parents seeking to persuade the UK Government to offer the vaccine to all children under the age of 11 as a matter of routine. Few will have been…

Case reported and summarized by Gregory Bacon, Bristows LLP Mr Justice Carr is only a few months into his judicial career, but having already provided welcome guidance on the role of plausibility in considering both the questions of inventive step and sufficiency (see earlier blog post on Actavis v Eli Lilly), he has now produced…