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
The search for a successor of Benoît Battistelli as president of the European Patent Organisation has started in full with the publication of a vacancy notice on the EPO website. It is obvious from the text that the controversial Battistelli, whose term in office ends in June 2018, has no chances to stay on. According…
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…
In relation to a patent that protected the interaction of a key and a cylinder in order to constitute a security locking system, the Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 15) handed down a Judgment on 14 July 2016 in which it declared that the Defendant had directly infringed this patent by reproducing one of the…
One of the most controversial issues relating to Standard-Essential Patent (“SEP”) is to determine whether injunctive relief is available to SEP holders. Undoubtedly, in negotiation with a standard implementer, injunction is the most powerful weapon for an SEP holder, and will exert significant influence on the final license terms. Consequently, the court’s attitude towards SEP…
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…
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…
