The Court of Appeal dismissed Boehringer Ingelheim’s application for permission to appeal the first instance Patents Court decision that EP (UK) 1,379,220 lacked inventive step. The Court of Appeal also considered and overturned the existing judicial guidance on granting permission to appeal in patent matters. Case date: 16 December 2016 Case number: A3 2016 0271 Court: Court of…
The FCJ held that: a) An objection by one party can lead to the petitioner being required to demonstrate a legitimate interest in the inspection of the files of a patent nullity procedure, but only if the opposing party demonstrates an interest of its own which may stand in the way of the inspection. b)…
Whilst being wary of placing too much emphasis on statistics (the phrase “lies, damn lies and statistics” comes to mind), the authors have seen figures which suggest that the last ten years have consistently seen English patent litigation outcomes which are overall less favourable to the patentee than their opponents. That is until 2017, when…
As most readers will know, yesterday the European Commission published a proposal to amend Regulation 469/2009 concerning the supplementary protection certificate for medicinal products (the “SPC Regulation”) aimed at introducing a so-called “manufacturing exemption for export purposes” (in short, a “manufacturing waiver”). The rationale behind it is that the introduction of this new exemption to…
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…
