In most systems, a patent is valid for 20 years from the filing date of the patent application. Patents are granted with a presumption of validity but no patent is safe from being challenged and declared (partially) invalid by national courts or, in the case of European patents, revoked by the European Patent Office. Often, a claim of invalidity of a patent is a reaction to an action of the patentee, in particular an infringement action.
In a recent decision by the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court, the issue was whether a technical feature may consist in information attached to an object if such information increases the usability of the object. The case T-66-07, Svenco Papperssäcker AB v. Segezha Packaging A/S, Svenco had filed suit claiming infringement of its Danish patent…
Liversidge v (1) Owen Mumford Limited (2) Abbott Laboratories Limited In April 2011, the claimant commenced patent infringement proceedings in the UK Patents County Court (“PCC”) against the defendants in respect of European Patent No. 2067496 entitled “Medical Injector”. The defendants denied infringement and counterclaimed invalidity. Background The claimant filed a patent application for a…
If the patent provides a multi-level method to be applied in more than one production entity (here: the preparation of sausage casing as endless rolls and their automatic filling at the sausage manufacturers’), the “skilled person” can be a team of several persons specialized in different disciplines, e.g. mechanical engineering, process technology and food technology,…
Almost one year ago the European Court of Justice (CJEU) “clarified” the law on supplementary protection certificates. On November 24, 2011 it rendered its verdict in the “Medeva” case (C-322-10). One should not forget that “Georgetown” (C -422/10) was rendered on the same day and only one day later, the Yeda (C-518/10), Queensland (C-630/10) and…
The Court cited the parallel proceedings between the parties in the United Kingdom, where the approach of the EPO Board of Appeal in T331/87 Houdaille/Removal of Feature [1991] EPOR 194 was applied, and concluded that the changes in the patent amount to added matter. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of…
The Court of Appeal partially reversed the Brussels Commercial Court’s decision invalidating Lundbeck’s SPC for escitalopram, to the extent that it had immediate effect. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.KluwerIPCases.com
The pan-European litigation between Danish companies Danisco A/S (today a part of DuPont) and Novozymes A/S has been extensively reported in posts on this blog (12/08/2011; 21/09/2011; 10/01/2012; 09/07/2012; 03/08/2012). The litigation has involved Novozymes’ European Patent EP 1 804 592 B1 on the manufacture of certain enzyme-containing animal food pellets. In a decision announced…
By ruling of 10 July 2012, the Court of Turin decided in the first instance an infringement action filed by Italian company Novamont against German and French companies Biotec and Biosphère, for the alleged infringement of three Novamont patents concerning starch based plastic materials used in the production of biodegradable shoppers. The Court denied the…
The District Court of Turin rejected Merck’s requests for a preliminary injunction, finding lack of inventive step of the claimed co-formulation of dorzolamid and timolol based on a prima facie assessment following the problem solution approach of the EPO Boards of Appeal. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this…
One of the recurrent topics in patent litigation in Spain is whether or not a Court can review the validity of a patent in the context of preliminary injunction proceedings. According to some Courts, life is too short in preliminary injunction proceedings. If the Court had to embark upon analysing the validity of the patent,…
