Denmark: Linco Food Systems v Meyn Food Processing Technology
The Danish Supreme Court dismissed Meyn’s claim against Linco and declared Meyn’s patent invalid.
Validity
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.
Negma v. Biogaran and Laboratoires Medidom, Court of Appeal Paris (Cour d’appel Paris), 30 June 2010
In this case, the Court of Appeal of Paris affirmed a judgement of the Court of First Instance of Paris holding that a product “may not acquire novelty simply because it is prepared in a purer form”. The Court decided that “the parameters that are not inherent to the chemical compound itself, but rather are…
English Court of Appeal judgment in Schlumberger continues pro-patentee trend
There have not been many decisions in 2010 from the English Patents Court that are likely to be regarded in future decades as seminal judgments. However, in the author’s view, the judgment of the Court of Appeal of 28 July 2010 in Schlumberger Holdings Limited v Electromagnetic Geoservices AS is likely to be cited frequently…
1 + 1 = 0
What happens when the same invention is covered by a French national patent and a European patent claiming the priority of the French application and when the European patent lapses after having replaced the French national patent?
The patentee has no patent at all!
That is the bitter lesson of the 2 July 2010 decision of the Cour d’Appel of Paris.
Opposition procedure before the European Patent Office and nullity claim of a national designation
A 1 July 2009 decision of the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris illustrates how the French courts proceed when they are seised of a nullity claim of the French designation of a European patent against which opposition may be filed or opposition proceedings are pending.
Discoveries versus inventions in an interesting decision of the Court of Appeal of Turin
In a case involving the US multinational Mars and an Italian producer of rice (Riseria Monferrato), the Court of Appeal of Turin, by decision of 19 November 2008, tackled – one of the few cases in Italian case law – the interesting issue of the difference between discoveries and inventions and their patentability. The case…
Dynamische Dokumentengenerierung, Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof), 22 April 2010
The German Federal Court of Justice decided that a method concerning the dynamic document generation of structured documents in a client-server-environment, which is implemented by software, was not excluded from patent protection as a program for data processing systems. A method is always of technical nature if it concerns the direct interaction of elements of…
Teva v. Sepracor, Antwerp Commercial Court (Rechtbank van Koophandel Antwerpen), 11 December 2009
This matter concerns levocetirizine, which is an enantiomer of cetirizine. The Court held that, at the priority date, it would have been obvious to the skilled person to check whether levocetirizine (which had been individually disclosed before the priority date) had improved pharmacological characteristics compared to the racemic mixture (i.e. cetirizine). As a rule, resolving…
Nemo censetur ignorare “enantiomer”
Separating and testing the two enantiomers of a chiral molecule having an already-known therapeutic effect in order to identify the active enantiomer, evaluating its specific therapeutic effect and finally recommending, through the patent, its use for an identical but better-quality therapeutic effect, involves no inventive step.
Mundipharma v. Mylan, Court of Appeal Lyon (Cour d’Appel Lyon), 20 October 2009
In this case the Court of Appeal of Lyon affirmed the first French judgement granting an interlocutory injunction to prevent imminent infringement of a patent. The President of the First Instance Court had not considered any argument relating to the validity of the patent, and decided that in summary proceedings, only the existence of the…