The scope of a patent is to be interpreted according to Art. 69 EPC and the Protocol. If the literal text is limiting, the question is how the skilled person would understand this limitation. If the limiting wording is due to a technical consideration, the limitation may be considered differently from when the limitation can…
In the past few years, the Barcelona Courts with jurisdiction over patent matters (Commercial Courts nos. 1, 4 and 5) have acted in close coordination with one another, e.g. holding joint deliberations of the three judges. Now, in a case where one of those Courts refused to join two separate infringement actions pending before Courts…
A patent that is limited during the course of the proceedings (even after the pleadings) is held to have been so limited ab initio if the limitation is duly registered. When a European patent is granted and validated, an existing national patent loses its effect only for the invention claimed in the European patent. The…
The Court held that a selection invention is inventive if the compound of the selection offers surprisingly advantageous or improved properties over the prior art compounds. These properties should already be plausible from the patent application as filed. Further, a selection invention would be obvious to the skilled person if they would assume a neutral…
Late in 2018, Board 3.5.07 issued two decisions on appeals from Examining Division decisions, in which the length of the examination procedure was excessive. The Board decided that such delays can amount to a substantial procedural violation, but that it is only equitable to reimburse the appeal fee if the applicant took some proactive measures…
Pemetrexed, yet again: last Wednesday the District Court of The Hague, swimming against the current and after a deep dive in the prosecution file, decided that Fresenius did not infringe Eli Lilly’s ‘pemetrexed disodium’ patent with a generic product that does not contain pemetrexed disodium, not even by equivalence. The basic facts of the widespread…
The Federal Court of Justice held that introducing only selected features of an example into a claim is allowable if the resulting combination in the claimed generality is derivable from the application as originally filed. Further, a general incentive from the prior art does not render the specific embodiment of an invention obvious. Case date:…
Although at first instance the patent was found to lack inventive step without using the problem-and-solution approach, the use of the PSA by the Court of Appeal did not make a difference to the outcome in the present case. Case date: 28 May 2019 Case number: 200.222.873/01 Court: Court of Appeal of The Hague A full…
The Court of Appeal dismissed Synthon’s appeal against the Patent Court’s finding that the patent in suit did involve an inventive step over the prior art, and Teva’s appeal against the Court’s finding that certain claims of the patent were invalid for added matter. Case date: 21 March 2017 Case number: [2017] EWCA Civ 148…
by Hetti Hilge In its latest FRAND judgment the Düsseldorf appeal court confirmed that in the context of FRAND evaluation the emphasis shall be – in contrast to English practice – on the ND (‘non-discriminatory’) prong of FRAND. The decision was rendered on 22 March 2019 in the appeal proceedings between Unwired Planet and Huawei…
