The proposal of the European Commission on the Regulation of SEP’s (the “Proposal“) has elicited criticism from various sides, including patent attorneys and lawyers, law professors, the government of the Netherlands and Finland, prominent UPC judges (see here and here), the president of the EPO and leading SEP holders (such as Nokia and Qualcomm). The…
On February 20, 2024, a Brazilian Congressman introduced a bill to amend the national IP Statute (Law #9,279/96) and regulate the ownership of inventions generated by artificial intelligence systems. Bill #303/2024 proposes the addition of a paragraph to Article 6 of the IP Statute, which regulates ownership of inventions, with the following wording: “in the…
As William Blake put it in Auguries of Innocence, written in 1803 but not published until 1863, “A Robin Redbreast in a cage, puts all heaven in a rage”. So did the ill-crafted concept of plausibility with the case law of the EPO’s Technical Boards of Appeal (TBA). It introduced an artificial cage that trapped…
This piece deals with the Patent Mediation and Arbitration Centre (PMAC) of the Unified Patent Court (UPC), addresses key concerns about the risk of unenforceability of PMAC arbitral awards, and proposes three implementable solutions. Competence and Enforcement of UPC and PMAC final decisions The PMAC, established by Article 35 UPC Agreement, can administer mediation and…
The extent of the problems with the content management system took the Unified Patent Court by surprise. Alexander Ramsay, registrar of the Court and former chairman of the UPC’s preparatory committee, has said this in an interview with Kluwer IP Law. According to Ramsay, the court is working hard and spending a lot of resources…
It took longer to arrive than expected but here it is. The UK Courts have been given an opportunity to depart from the jurisprudence of the CJEU in their interpretation of the SPC Regulation. The opportunity has arisen in the following way. In December 2023 the English High Court dismissed an appeal by Merck against…
The European Parliament supports the introduction of a full ban on patents for all plants produced by certain New Genomic Techniques (NGT), plant material, parts thereof, genetic information and process features they contain. The ban, part of a proposal to introduce two different categories of NGT plants, got support in a vote today. The provision…
The SPC reform which is currently undergoing the legislative procedure in the European Union has taken a further decisive step forward, as the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI Committee) has approved an amended version of the draft text of the four new EU regulations on SPCs for medicinal and plant protection products as…
Opt-outs are dealt with in Part IV of the UPC Agreement entitled “Transitional Provisions”. The prevailing view is that these provisions should be interpreted to mean that an opted-out patent is no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the UPC and the opt out shall remain in place for the lifetime of the patent. Furthermore,…
From the potpourri of decisions that the Swiss Federal Supreme Court handed down last year, I have selected one in subjective hindsight that I consider to be particularly relevant regarding further cases. The outcome of most decisions of the Swiss Federal Patent Court in 2023 heavily depended on the specific circumstances and the effects of…
