Case Law, United States of America

, (Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US)/

Decisions by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in three interference proceedings between Stanford University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (“CUHK”)—in which the Board found that methods of testing for fetal aneuploidies in DNA samples drawn from maternal blood were unpatentable for lack of written description—have been vacated by the U.S. Court of…

Biologics, EPC, EPO, European Union

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The European Patent Office amends its Regulations in order to exclude from patentability plants and animals exclusively obtained by an essentially biological breeding process. The decision, during the 152st meeting of the Administrative Council of the EPO, came after years of discussion and decisions to the contrary by the Enlarged Board of Appeal in the so-called Broccoli-II…

EPO, European Union, Germany, Unitary Patent, UPC

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Chairman Alexander Ramsay of the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court regrets that a constitutional complaint has led to the suspension of the German ratification process of the UPC Agreement. In a message which was published on the committee’s website today, Ramsay states: ‘In Germany another layer of complexity has been added due to…

Inventive step, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/ /3 Comments

No doubt, one of the patentability requirements which is more difficult to examine is inventive step. Unlike other requirements, which call for a more objective analysis, inventive activity requires a subjective judgment, that is, whether the invention would have been obvious to a person skilled in the art. Taking into account that, inevitably, inventive activity…

European Union, Unitary Patent, UPC

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By Alan Johnson and Luke Maunder, Bristows There is a lot of talk about the consequences of an ineffective opt-out, but concentrating on this issue perhaps ignores a more basic one: can anyone even challenge an opt-out? For those who wish to delve into the depths of legal analysis, a treatise on the issue may…

Case Law, Portugal

(University of Coimbra)/

The Court of Intellectual Property has exclusive jurisdiction to revoke patents. The mandatory arbitration court established by Law 62/2011 cannot declare the nullity of a pharmaceutical patent even if the issue is raised merely as a defence and with effects limited to the parties to the proceedings. A full summary of this case has been…

Case Law, United States of America

(Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US)/

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err in instituting Covered Business Method (“CBM”) review and finding several claims of a financing method patent owned by Credit Acceptance Corporation (“CAC”) to be directed to a patent-ineligible abstract idea, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled. The Board correctly rejected CAC’s…

EPC, European Union, Unitary Patent, UPC

(Hoffmann Eitle)/ /1 Comment

Another significant delay – or even more substantial – trouble seems to be ahead of the Unitary Patent system, due to today’s decision of the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) in Karlsruhe. The Bundesverfassungsgericht has requested the German President not to sign the bills already approved by Bundestag and Bundesrat on the ratification of the Unitary…

Inventive step, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

Although the title of this blog will sound trite to many friends accustomed to arguing patent cases before the European Patent Office, it does not sound so trite when read against the background of Spanish case law.  For years it was relatively rare for the Spanish Supreme Court to accept appeals in patent matters, which…