Swiss Federal Patent Court, Case No O2013_006 (7 October 2015) The Swiss Federal Patent Court partially revoked/upheld the Swiss Part of EP 0 944 937 B1 concerning a hydraulic pressing device in nullity proceedings initiated by the Swiss Von Arx AG against the patent owner, the German Gustav Klauke GmbH. The patent in suit pertains…

Our previous post of June 2014 “Patent revocation actions in France: mind the slot! ” presented and criticized the decision of 25 April 2013 of the tribunal de grande instance de Paris, 3rd chamber, 1st section, Evinerude v. Giraudeau and Aair Lichens, applying to patent revocation actions the new time limitation period of five years adopted by the…

Apart from the enthralling Lyrica saga which began in earnest back in January, and the main trial of which recently began before Arnold J, 2015 has not witnessed many significant pharmaceutical patent decisions from the UK patents courts. Thus, three cases in this field which, rather like London buses, arrived almost simultaneously, have provided welcome…

The judgement “Schleifprodukt” rendered by the German Federal Court of Justice on 25 November 2014 could be seen as a step towards harmonisation with the EPO because the court carried out the test for the admissibility of claim amendments by assessing whether the feature combination of the amended claim in its entirety represents a technical teaching which is identifiable from the original application as being suitable for achieving the effects of the invention.

by Niels Hölder and Thomas Koch In “Zugriffsrechte” (Access Rights) (docket X ZR 35/11), the Federal Court of Justice decided that a claim can in principle not be construed such that it covers none of the embodiments described in the specification. To simplify the facts, the claim in question specified two process steps. The Federal…

The Italian Supreme Court recently (and surprisingly) said that inventors must be named as co-defendants in revocation actions. In 2010 I wrote a post concerning the requirement to name inventors as co-defendants in Italian revocation actions. I reported that the Court of Appeal of Milan had established a principle whereby named inventors had to be called…

The juxtapositon of patent limitations in national nullity proceedings and before national patent offices on the one hand and according to article 105a EPC on the other hand is a hotly debated issue not only in Switzerland. In a recently published decision of 2 June 2014 (4A_541/2013), the Swiss Federal Supreme Court had to decide –…