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.
The Supreme Court held that claiming priority of an earlier application requires a direct and unambiguous disclosure in the priority document of all features of the technical teaching as defined in the claims. If the claimed invention is characterized by a particular property of one of its components that has not (clearly) been disclosed in…
The Federal Court of Justice held that the meaning of a patent claim as a whole and the contribution of the single features to the result of the invention must be assessed in nullity proceedings. It is not permitted to attribute a certain meaning to the claim to only avoid an issue of undue broadening….
The German Federal Patent Court (FPC) has recently published its first decision (3 Ni 28/11 of 2 May 2012 “Ranibizumab”, GRUR 2013, 58) dealing with the interpretation of related CJEU Judgments “Medeva” (C-322/10) of 24 November 2011 and “University of Queensland” (C-630/10) of 25 November 2011. In the view of the FPC, the infringement test, which had been utilized by the German Federal Court of Justice in examining the condition of Art. 3(a) of the Regulation, can thus no longer be relied upon. Further, the FPC ruled that the requirement that an SPC can only be granted for active ingredients which are specified or identified in the wording of the claims of the basic patent, applies likewise to products of single active ingredients and combinations of active ingredients.
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…
