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 District Court Düsseldorf clarified its case law regarding the requirement of a complete translation of patents into the German language and how to deal with errors in such translations. Besides, the Court held that the patent is to be considered valid as long as there is no binding decision on its invalidity. Hence, a…
This case concerns a referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeal regarding the interpretation of the term ‘pending application’ in the wording of Rule 25(1) EPC 1973. In the appealed decision from the receiving section, the receiving section held that from the date of the refusal by an examining division an application was no longer…
The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s finding that Aerotel’s Patent relating to a method of making pre-paid landline telephone calls was invalid for want of inventive step over the principal prior art (the WATS system). Having made this finding it was unnecessary to consider Aerotel’s other grounds of appeal.Further, Aerotel’s arguments of commercial…
The Hague District Court nullified Sepracor’s patent for compositions for treating allergic disorders using (-) cetirizine (levociterizine) on the basis of lack of inventive step. The Court considered that the person skilled in the art knows that the pharmaceutical efficacy of a racemic mixture generally can be attributed to one of the enantiomers. At the…
Claim 1 of the patent application contained the feature that ‘the device is adapted to generate L addresses, which are smaller in number than N = Ng × 2m2 virtual addresses for reading data from said interleaver memory in which L data bits are stored’. The Board of Appeal noted that it might be true…
The District Court of The Hague held that all claims of Lundbeck’s escalitopram patent were invalid for lack of inventive step. The District Court nullified the patent and also called the Dutch Supplementary Protection Certificate which was based upon the patent null. The District Court’s decision contains many references to the 4 May 2007 decision…
The District Court of The Hague held that all claims of Lunbeck’s escalitopram patent were invalid for lack of inventive step. The District Court nullified the patent and also called the Dutch Supplementary Protection Certificate which was based upon the patent null. The District Court’s decision contains many references to the 4 May 2007 decision…
The Provincial Court of Barcelona dismissed an appeal filed against a judgment from the Commercial Court number 4 of Barcelona, which had concluded that the product claims of the patent in suit were valid and enforceable in Spain under Articles 27.1 and 70.7 of TRIPS. The main interest of the judgment lies in the fact…
The patent in suit contains claims for the (+)enantiomer of citalopram and a method for its resolution from the racemate (the diol method). The Defendants appealed a decision of the Court of Appeal arguing that the patent was insufficient because it effectively claimed the (+)enantiomer made by any method whereas the specification only disclosed two…
Lack of novelty by re-working prior art requires that the re-works must inevitably lead to results falling within the claim of the patent at issue. If choices have to be made for the re-working process, the result is not inevitable.A possible breach of Article 84 EPC (clarity) does not lead to nullity. The Court states…
