The European Commission has proposed to introduce an ‘export manufacturing waiver’ to Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs) to ‘help Europe’s pharmaceutical companies tap into fast-growing global markets and foster jobs, growth and investments in the EU’. According to a press release of 28 May 2018, ‘Supplementary Protection Certificates extend patent protection for medicinal products which must…
The FCJ ordered that the petitioner must be granted access to the entire file wrapper. The objections raised by the plaintiff with regard to parts of the file which allow conclusions to be drawn on infringement proceedings conducted in parallel or which contain information on the designs challenged there were unfounded. Case date: 11 July 2017…
On March 28, 2018, the Beijing High Court issued its decision for Iwncomm v. Sony, a high profile case concerning infringement of a standard essential patent (SEP). The appellate court amended the trial judgment on some key findings, but still upheld a permanent injunction and damages of about CNY 9 million (USD 1.3 million)….
The Federal Patent Court (FPC) ruled on the interplay between limitation proceedings before the EPO and a national nullity action, and the circumstances in which a request for a declaratory judgment concerning (partial) termination of proceedings in relation to the limited part of the patent is admissible and well-founded. The FPC held that where the…
The Federal Court of Justice confirmed that the definition of the person skilled in the art aims at defining a fictive person, from whose point of view the prior art and the patent is considered. Therefore, this definition cannot be based on considerations as to interpretation of the patent or inventive step. Case date: 09 January…
The FCJ held that when assessing inventive step the claim should be interpreted so that the disclosed embodiments are taken into account. Prior art that is far removed from the disclosed embodiments can thus not be assumed to disclose the most important features. Further, it was again confirmed that prior art that already provides a…
In an interference proceeding, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board correctly determined that claims 65-67 of applicant General Hospital Corporation’s (GHC’s) U.S. Patent Application No. 13/789,575 for methods of removing hair by using nanoparticles to damage hair follicles lacked sufficient written description under § 112 of the Patent Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals for…
In preliminary injunction proceedings, the influential Barcelona Court of Appeal held that reasons of “congruence” bind the court to basing the assessment of inventive step strictly on the particular prior art document chosen as the closest prior art by the party challenging its validity, regardless of whether that choice is technically and objectively justified. This…
The Federal Court of Justice confirmed that a nullity defendant can defend its patent to a limited extent only insofar as it is attacked by the nullity plaintiff. The limited defence of the patent in dispute by combining an attacked claim with an uncontested subclaim or with one of several variants of an uncontested subclaim…
The Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 15) recently handed down an interesting judgment (dated 6 February 2018) revoking a utility model and ordering the owner to pay the damages caused by having enforced it while knowing that it lacked novelty. According to Article 114 of the former Spanish Patent Act (equivalent to Article 104 of…
