A patent is a document, issued, upon application, by a government office (or a regional office acting for several countries), which describes an invention and creates a legal situation in which the patented invention can normally only be exploited (manufactured, used, sold, imported) with the authorization of the holder of the patent. ‘Invention’ means a solution to a specific problem in the field of technology. An invention may relate to a product or a process. The protection conferred by the patent is limited in time, generally 20 years. In a number of countries, inventions are also protectable through registration of a ‘utility model’ or ‘short-term patent’.
The UK Supreme Court today handed down its decision in Actavis v ICOS. The decision was unanimous, with Lord Hodge giving the only judgment. The case concerns two principal questions. First, how the test for obviousness applies to a dosage patent; and secondly, whether the Court of Appeal was entitled to reverse the judgment of…
In a post yesterday our colleagues at Vossius commented on the CJEU’s decision, which had just been handed down in Abraxis*. As Vossius have explained, although the decision appears to give clarity for new formulations of old products, it remains unclear as to how this can be reconciled with Neurim, which was not overturned. In…
On 12 February 2019, the Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 15) issued an interesting judgment clarifying the role played by “drawings” for the purpose of interpreting the scope of protection of a patent. This judgment has reversed a judgment of 12 December 2017 from Barcelona Commercial Court number 1 which, according to the Court of…
The results of the EPO’s online user consultation on a procedural option for postponing examination of a European patent application have now been published and are available here (pdf). To cut a long story short, users’ opinions are quite divided. The overall result is surprisingly similar to the result of the Brexit referendum (52% in…
On 1 February 2019, the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court granted an injunction against Mylan AB’s sale of the product Tadalafil »Mylan« containing 5 mg tadalafil in Denmark. On 7 September 2018, Eli Lilly Danmark A/S (“Eli Lilly”) brought a case to the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court requesting a preliminary injunction against Mylan AB…
On 4 March 2019, we uploaded a post noting that the English Patents Court had decided to refer a question to the CJEU on whether it was permissible for a patentee to rely on a third party’s MA to obtain an SPC in the absence of consent from that third party. We briefly summarised the…
Not much time for blogging today, but yet another referral to the Enlarged Board may deserve our attention. TBA 3.5.03 referred the following questions to the Enlarged Board, of which question 3 may have the greatest Impact: 1. Ist im Beschwerdeverfahren das Recht auf Durchführung einer mündlichen Verhandlung gemäß Artikel 116 EPÜ eingeschränkt, wenn die…
A few days ago, our Kluwer News Blogger reported on a decision in the Netherlands, holding two Dutch patents for processing the Ethiopian grain “teff” as null and void. While this decision certainly has a political dimension, which formed the focus of the reports in the general press and the report from the Norwegian Fridtjof…
The Supreme People’s Court of China recently issued a new judicial interpretation regarding preliminary injunctions (PI) for intellectual property (IP) disputes that took effect on January 1, 2019, officially titled “Provisions of The Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Laws in Adjudication of Action Preservation Cases Involving IP Disputes” (Provisions). The…
Two recent decisions in the UK and Australia in the long-running pregabalin litigations demonstrate the different approaches in these jurisdictions to determine if a patent specification has sufficiently disclosed an invention. Readers will recall that the judgments concerned Warner-Lambert’s Swiss-style claims for the use of the compound pregabalin (marketed as Lyrica) in the treatment of…
