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.
On 22 July 2016, IP Australia approved a patent specification involving computer programming in poker machines in Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited [2016] APO 49. IP Australia’s decision comes on the heels of the High Court of Australia’s approval of the Full Federal Court decision in Commissioner of Patents v RPL Central Pty Ltd [2015]…
The end of July traditionally brings a flurry of patents judgments from the English Courts. This year was no exception, hence the large number of posts in the last few days. Among this year’s flurry was a decision handed down by the Court of Appeal on 27 July 2016 in Hospira v Genentech ([2016] EWCA…
by Rachel Mumby Those readers who are unfamiliar with the excessively optimistic outlook of Mr Wilkins Micawber in Charles Dicken’s novel David Copperfield, would be forgiven for having had to look up the word “Micawberism” on reading it in the judgment of Floyd J (as he then was) in Blacklight Power Inc. v The Comptroller-General…
by Rachel Mumby Bexsero, the Meningitis B vaccine marketed by GSK, has been the subject of many newspaper headlines in the UK over the last year, with parents seeking to persuade the UK Government to offer the vaccine to all children under the age of 11 as a matter of routine. Few will have been…
by Rachel Mumby It would be an unusual case in which the parties did not criticise each other’s experts in one way or another, and indeed patent litigators in England and Wales have become no stranger to judicial criticism of the way that experts are instructed. However, in the case of American Science & Engineering…
Okay, this result, which was recently reached by TBA 3.3.04 in decision T 394/11 (in German language), may perhaps not come as a big surprise to you, since we all learnt in school that acetic acid is a classic example of an organic acid as opposed to an inorganic acid. Yet it raises two interesting…
Case reported and summarised by Gregory Bacon, Bristows LLP Mr Justice Carr has issued an interesting interim judgment regarding the jurisdiction of the English Court to grant negative declarations in relation to patent applications before the EPO (Fujifilm Kyowa Biologics v Abbvie Biotechnology [2016] EWHC 425 (Pat)). The case concerns an application by Fujifilm Kyowa…
A recent decision by the German Federal Court of Justice (Polyesterabmischungen, X ZR 90/11) relating to a patent concerning polyester resin blends may be instructive to demonstrate how an experimental report reproducing a prior art test instruction can be helpful to a nullity plaintiff, even if the description in the prior art document is incomplete…
Case reported and summarized by Gregory Bacon, Bristows LLP Mr Justice Carr is only a few months into his judicial career, but having already provided welcome guidance on the role of plausibility in considering both the questions of inventive step and sufficiency (see earlier blog post on Actavis v Eli Lilly), he has now produced…
Swiss Federal Patent Court, Case No O2013_006 (7 October 2015) The Swiss Federal Patent Court partially revoked/upheld the Swiss Part of EP 0 944 937 B1 concerning a hydraulic pressing device in nullity proceedings initiated by the Swiss Von Arx AG against the patent owner, the German Gustav Klauke GmbH. The patent in suit pertains…
