Although the Irish government scheduled a series of referendums for 2018 and 2019 last month, the referendum on Irish participation in the Unitary Patent system was not one of them. This was confirmed by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation in Ireland. The press office of the ministry stated: ‘The Government deferred making a…
The Administrative Council (AC) of the European Patent Organisation has elected António Campinos to succeed Benoît Battistelli as President of the EPO. Campinos 5-year term will start on 1 July 2018. According to an EPO announcement, the Portuguese Campinos was elected during the AC meeting in Munich today. He is currently Executive Director of the…
In the US, the potential for forum shopping in patent litigation has recently been reduced by the TC Heartland ruling of the Supreme Court. But what can be expected at the Unified Patent Court, with its central, regional and local divisions? Amandine Léonard, PhD researcher at the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law, thinks the…
The IT Team of the UPC Preparatory Committee will launch a new version of its CMS next week, in line with the requirements of the period of Provisional Application of the UPCA ‘and specifically designed for the Court’s sunrise phase’ – the period preceding the UPC opening its doors, during which European patents can be…
A judgment of 13 July 2017 from the Spanish Supreme Court (Civil Chamber) has highlighted the importance of taking the fine pencil when examining novelty. The decision stemmed from a judgment of 12 September 2014 from the Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 15), which had declared patent ES 2.344.241 invalid due to lack of novelty….
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s construction of the term “body” disclosed in multiple claims of a downhole drilling tool patent has been reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit as unreasonably overbroad and contrary to descriptions in the patent’s specification. The Board’s rejection of the challenged claims following inter partes…
A data sequence can only be regarded as a product directly obtained by a patent-protected process if it has tangible technical properties that are directly imparted on it by this method, and if the data sequence itself can therefore be appropriate subject-matter of a product patent. The representation of an experimental result obtained by a…
In China, judges handling patent litigations often experience difficulties in claim construction and infringement determination due to the lack of technical backgrounds. Although forensic appraisals were then widely adopted to help judges identify professional facts, some downsides were observed in the technical appraisal system. As for the expert auxiliary system, it is playing a more…
For the first time, the Spanish Supreme Court made far-reaching observations on key issues of the assessment of inventive step and, in particular, on a) the reformulation of the “objective technical problem” as defined in the patent’s specification, b) the limits to the combination of prior art documents and c) the professional qualifications required for…
Substantial evidence supported a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision finding a patent for an eyewear retention device unpatentable as obvious, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. A prior art device created by a fisherman and described in a newspaper article made use of a “resilient” retainer—as claimed by the…
