As is well known in the life sciences community in Europe, both the Commission and the Parliament have proposed reforms to the Medicines Directive which, if implemented, would serve to broaden the ambit of the Bolar exemption in the European Union. It is understood that the European Council is now considering these reforms and it…
Last Tuesday, the big news in the patent world was of course that the UPC’s Court of First Instance (CFI), Düsseldorf Division, in case 355/2023, found that if the defendant is domiciled in a Contracting Member State (in the case at hand, Germany), the UPC has jurisdiction to hear the infringement action in respect of…
As most readers will be well aware, one of the hottest topics in the patent world is the broadening of the Bolar provision envisaged in the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Union code relating to medicinal products for human use, and repealing Directive 2001/83/EC and Directive…
A judicial and academic debate on standard essential patents (SEPs) in China has recently arisen. The issuance of anti-suit injunctions (ASIs) by Chinese courts in a relatively short period of time (between 2019 and 2020) and the ensuing TRIPS/WTO dispute between the EU and China over the TRIPS compatibility of such ASIs, exemplify such debate….
On June 17, 2022, WTO members adopted a waiver to the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) allowing suspension of patent related to the Covid-19 pandemic, which is the result of a year and a half of intense debate. Already there is a lot of alarm in the industry about this…
Almost ten months after India and South Africa sparked the debate on the protection of intellectual property rights with the TRIPS COVID-19 Waiver (IP/C/W/669), there is still no consensus at the TRIPS Council in favour of any action. Despite the support of numerous other WTO Members, including the United States, the TRIPS COVID-19 Waiver still…
(UPDATED) The US has thrown its support behind an initiative at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to temporarily waive intellectual property rights in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Late April rich members of the WTO, including the US, were still blocking the proposal backed by developing countries to suspend these rights for the production of…
Normal service looks to have been resumed following the Court of Appeal judgment in IPCom v Vodafone [2021] EWCA Civ 205, in which Arnold LJ reversed a first instance finding by Recorder Douglas Campbell QC that Vodafone was entitled to a defence of Crown use in respect of certain acts which infringed an IPCom patent,…
In his 1913 essay Totem und Taboo, Freud defined taboo as a prohibition related to what is considered sacred or impure. The famous psychoanalyst insists on the irrationality of the phenomenon. Thus, compulsory licensing, which is often seen as an impure danger, seems to be a kind of taboo for intellectual property specialists. But the…
As Bob Hudec explained in his legendary The GATT Legal System and World Trade Diplomacy, GATT’s (since 1995, WTO) long-standing practice of seeking to adopt decisions by consensus finds its roots in 1947, when the then 23 parties to GATT were a small club of good friends. The proposition that a friend might impose a…
