The Unified Patent Court (UPC) is a planned future court common to EU Member States which participate in the Unitary Patent system, and it will be part of their judicial system. After a transitional period of 7 years or 14 years at most, it will have exclusive competence in respect of traditional European patents and European patents with unitary effect (Unitary Patents). The UPC is based on the Unified Patent Court Agreement. The Unitary Patent system and the UPC are planned to start functioning once certain ratification conditions have been fulfilled.
Is Germany no longer the Eldorado for preliminary injunctions (“PI”) applicants? Whatever the answer to this question, the UPC local division of the most famous German patent forum (i.e., Düsseldorf) has rejected Novartis and Genentech’s application for a PI against Celltrion relating to the anti-IgE antibody marketed under the name Xolair® (omalizumab), ruling that there…
On 27 August 2024, the Munich Local Division awarded a preliminary injunction (‘PI’) in an action brought by Hand Held Products against Scandit for infringement of EP3866051 (“Mobile computer configured to read multiple decodable indicia”) in relation to Scandit’s ‘Data Capture SDK’ software (Order UPC_CFI_74/2024). The Court held that Scandit’s software development kit (SDK) more…
Reading the title of this paper, perhaps you will smile, thinking about all the discussions that this issue has already ignited, even before the UPC came into force. Since the beginning, most patentees in the pharmaceutical field were suspicious concerning the new jurisdiction, especially regarding the same old question: pro-patentee or not? Hostile/not hostile to…
Background In June 2024, we reported that in an application for provisional measures brought by Abbott Diabetes Care against Sibio Technology, The Hague Local Division (“LD”) determined, inter alia, that it had competence for Ireland, in the sense that it could grant a PI extending to Ireland under European patent validated in that country. In…
In a long awaited, but timely decision the Düsseldorf local division has the honour to be the first to decide an infringement case before the UPC. Indeed, the court lived up to its promise to deliver a decision in about 1 year. The decision itself, where the patent was found invalid, but an auxiliary request…
The question of the role that UPC is likely to play in relation to SEPs (and therefore FRAND licenses) is one that I’ve heard most often since the new jurisdiction was born, certainly because the main aim of the UPC is to harmonize hitherto fragmented patent litigation in Europe, notably to improve legal certainty. However,…
This week we reported on the case between Huawei and Netgear, in which the defendant had obtained a production order for a comparable license granted by Huawei to Qualcomm, the production of which Netgear had obtained via a decision of the Munich local division on 24 April 2024. It is interesting to note that this…
Like a time machine, we began yesterday by examining the first revocation decision issued by the Munich Central Division on 16 July (see here), today we’ll be looking back at another earlier case, in which the Düsseldorf local division granted UPC’s first permanent injunction on 3 July. Note that this case has already been brilliantly…
On 16 July 2024, the Munich Central Division revoked a patent for the first time in the litigation between Sanofi, Regeneron, and Amgen (UPC_CFI_1/2023). This decision is important not only because it is the first of its kind, but also because it establishes UPC’s position on the patentability of therapeutic antibody inventions. In this case,…
Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my interest, or rather my passion, for several Patent Law topics, including notably SEPs (see notably here, here and here), proof of infringement (see notably here, here and here) and UPC (see notably here, here and here). So far, UPC has not (yet) been the scene…
