On 12 July 2017, the UK Supreme Court handed down a ruling which caused a shockwave to resound across the UK patent community. For more than a decade, when addressing the issue of the construction and infringement of a patent, every practitioner would have focussed on the question prescribed by Lord Hoffmann in Kirin Amgen:…
Yesterday, 25 April 2018, AG Wathelet has handed down his opinion in the Teva v Gilead reference (Case C-121/17) suggesting that the question should be answered as follows: “The fact that a substance or combination of substances falls within the scope of protection of the basic patent is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for…
There has been much excitement and comment amongst the UK patent profession following the Supreme Court’s decision in Actavis v Eli Lilly [2017] UKSC 48 (see previous comment here) on patent claim construction. However, the Court in that case did not clarify how “normal” principles of claim interpretation are now to be applied, and whether…
On 24 November 2016, the Court of Appeal of Barcelona (Section 15) handed down a judgment in which it confirmed that “the interpretation of the scope of protection of a patent for the purposes of analysing its validity cannot be different from when its infringement is analysed”. The Judges also highlighted the relevance of the…
The Productivity Commission released its final report into Australia’s IP arrangements in December 2016 (covered in our post earlier this year, ‘IP Rights vs IP Wrongs’). Now, the Australian Government has weighed in on the Commission’s recommendations, supporting some and ‘noting’ others. With respect to patent law, the Government supports the following recommendations: Add an…
By Gregory Bacon Yes, you read that right. Thirteen years after the House of Lords had firmly shut the door on any notion of a doctrine extending the scope of patent protection outside the claims, the UK Supreme Court in yesterday’s judgment in Actavis v Eli Lilly [2017] UKSC 48 reversed gear and reintroduced a…
ECC’s patent strategy not Swiss courts’ cup of tea Ethical Coffee Company (ECC) and different entities of the Nestlé group of companies have been involved in many legal disputes in various jurisdictions. The parties’ positions are normally as follows: ECC seeks access to the Nespresso coffee capsule machines for its biodegradable coffee capsules and Nestlé…
In the past decade, a new character of the patent theatre has made inroads into the case law of some EU Member States, “imported” from the so-called “EPO case law”. Its name is “plausibility”. The origin of the plausibility concept can be traced to Decision T 939/92 (AgrEvo), where the EPO’s Board of Appeals held…
Australia ended 2016 flipping through the pages of the Productivity Commission’s final Inquiry Report on Australia’s Intellectual Property Arrangements. In general, the Commission considers that IP rights encourage innovation, but are not always necessary for it and can often be used harmfully. The proposed changes are aimed at balancing the interests of rights holders with…
In my latest Kluwer post I wrote about the confusion caused by the most recent decision of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court concerning the doctrine of equivalence. This confusion seems to have confused me as well. With respect to the background of the decision, it was actually the technical judge’s expert opinion, which affirmed an infringement of…
