The recent Apple v. Baili case has generated a wide interest in design patents. This article discusses developments on judicial standards for determining design patent infringement applied in Apple v. Baili, and some implications from this case. Such standards involve how to determine distinctive features, what to be considered to differentiate a functional feature, what…
UPDATE with quotes of the press conference of Michel Barnier at the bottom of this blogpost Will London’s pharmaceuticals and life sciences section of the Unified Patent Court have to be relocated post-Brexit? The EU will investigate this as part of the Brexit negotiations. This has been reported by ScienceBusiness.net. According to the website, the…
By Gregory Bacon Yes, you read that right. Thirteen years after the House of Lords had firmly shut the door on any notion of a doctrine extending the scope of patent protection outside the claims, the UK Supreme Court in yesterday’s judgment in Actavis v Eli Lilly [2017] UKSC 48 reversed gear and reintroduced a…
When this author published his blog of 27 June 2017, a reader kindly sent in a comment pointing out that as this author had not inserted the word “Spanish” before “Supreme Court”, and the blog was written in English, the reader had been misled; he initially thought that the judgment discussed had been issued by…
On 30 June 2017, the Danish Maritime and Commercial High Court issued a preliminary injunction against MBH-International A/S’ and its Danish distributor’s, OneMed A/S, import, offer for sale and sale of the urinary catheter assembly “Qufora OneStep”. Coloplast had applied for a preliminary injunction against the “Qufora OneStep” catheter assembly with reference to its European…
One of the remedies established in case of patent infringement in the Spanish Patents Act that was in force until 31 March 2017 was “the publication of the judgment finding against the infringer of the patent, at this party’s expense, through announcements and notifications to the interested persons. This measure will only be applicable when…
Preparations for the launch of the Unitary Patent system are progressing, despite the uncertainties and delays in the ratification process in Germany and the UK. The Case Management System (CMS) of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) will be ready ‘as of August 2017 and until the opening of the Court’, and tailored to prepare for the…
The Court of Appeal (Floyd LJ, Kitchin LJ and Longmore LJ) held that there was no issue of principle which prevented the courts from exercising their discretion to grant declarations of the type postulated in Arrow Generics Ltd (i.e. declarations that a product was old or obvious in patent law terms at a particular date)…
By Gregory Bacon The UK Supreme Court announced this morning that it has allowed Eli Lilly’s appeal and held that Actavis’ pemetrexed products directly infringe Lilly’s European patent to pemetrexed disodium in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain. The Court has also dismissed Actavis’ cross-appeal and held that Actavis’ products would also indirectly infringe…
Public prior use when a third party discloses all features of the patent-in-suit before the priority date to the alleged infringer, without concluding a non-disclosure agreement with the alleged infringer. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law
