by Wouter Pors, Bird & Bird The Hague On 10 April 2017 the UPC Preparatory Committee published the ‘final’ version of the 18th draft of the Rules of Procedure, as adopted during the committee meeting of 15 March 2017. This is still a draft, since only the Administrative Committee can really adopt the Rules of…
The Preparatory Committee for the Unified Patent Court has published a new version of the draft Rules of Procedure. According to the Committee, the draft ‘is yet to come under scrutiny by the European Commission on the compatibility of the Rules of Procedure with Union law and will be subject to formal adoption by the…
1. Background In June 2008, China announced the Outline of National IP Strategy (“IP Strategy”), which set up a roadmap for China to become a country of high level of IP creation, utilization and protection by 2020. As a key part of the IP Strategy, China committed to carry out a number of judicial reforms…
In an inter partes review (IPR) proceeding challenging a SimpleAir patent that described a method of transmitting data to remote computing devices, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err in concluding that IPR petitioner Google failed to establish that a combination of prior art references rendered the challenged claims unpatentably obvious, the U.S….
The enlarged board of appeal (EBA) of the European patent office effectively ended the possibility of poisonous priority. The EBA held that entitlement to partial priority may not be refused for a claim encompassing alternative subject-matter by virtue of generic expressions (generic “OR” claims) if the priority document discloses part of that subject matter in…
The duration of proceedings before the Boards of Appeal (BoA) currently is the EPO’s biggest problem in regard to speed. According to the latest Annual Report by the Boards of Appeal, the average length of inter partes proceedings is 37 months (up 1 month from 2015), i.e. more than three years. In 2016, two appeals…
Early certainty in opposition proceedings is clearly a desirable objective, and the President’s commitment to lowering the average duration of (normal) opposition proceedings to 15 months on the average deserves praise. In our experience, the new commitment has already started to result in that the summons to oral proceedings are issued sooner and that the…
The current President of the EPO claims in his blog that there is a general demand from the users of the EPO – i.e. primarily the applicants – to have a timely delivery of the work product of the EPO. In his words (emphasis added): But, as with any good service, good products need to…
Dr. Simon Klopschinski rospatt osten pross – Intellectual Property Rechtsanwälte In the international investment arbitration of Eli Lilly v. Canada the arbitral tribunal rendered on March 16, 2017 the first final award ever on patents and international investment law, thereby creating a completely new forum for litigating patents (ICSID Case No.: UNCT/14/2). The arbitral tribunal…
The German Federal Council, the Bundesrat approved draft legislation to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement and to amend German patent law in its 31 March session. It means the German procedure to ratify the UPCA nears completion. The Parliament, the Bundestag, had already given its approval on 9 March 2017. In order to finalize…
