The Federal Court of Justice made the following findings in relation to the material and personal scope of the right to prior use: 1. Where a pre-used embodiment does not implement all features of the patent claim, a modification of the pre-used embodiment which implements all the features is not covered by the right of…

In the present interlocutory case, VUB and Ablynx requested inspection of evidence that was seized from QVQ on the basis of suspicion of patent infringement. The provisions judge came to the conclusion that the interests of the claimants did not provide sufficient reason to – preliminarily – grant the inspection. Case date: 21 January 2020 Case…

In the United States, a judge may increase the damages for patent infringement up to threefold[1] resulting in awards of millions, or even billons, of dollars.  In 2016, the Supreme Court, in Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics,[2] rejected the then prevailing objective standard for determining enhanced damages and replaced it with a subjective one requiring,…

On Friday 13 March 2020, Birss J handed down a pair of judgments in the litigation between Evalve (a member of the Abbott group of companies) and Edwards Lifesciences, a veteran of UK patent litigation over the past decade. In the first judgment Evalve’s two UK patents, EP (UK) 1 408 850 and EP (UK)…

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…

Recently the Hon’ble Delhi High Court in its judgement of CDE Asia Limited v. Jaideep Shekhar and Anr. CS (COMM) 124/2019 has interpreted and clarified the observations made by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in its judgement of Alloy’s Wobben and Anr. Vs. Yogesh Mehra and Ors. The Hon’ble Supreme Court had observed in the aforesaid…

The IP Tribunal of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) recently issued a decision in Dunjun v. Tengda ((2019) SPC IP Civil No. 147), holding that the manufacturer’s making and selling of routers directly infringed a telecommunication method-of-use patent even though the manufacturer itself did not perform one single step of the patented method. This article…

Two decisions T 0184/17 and T 0603/14 were recently issued concerning admissibility of late inventive step attacks on appeal.  Both cases were decided under the old Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA), but will likely still be relevant under the increased procedural stringency of the new RPBA. T 0184/17 – A Tea…