Australia, Case Law, Pharmaceutical patent

, (Clayton Utz)/

Since Warner-Lambert successfully defended its pregabalin patent and obtained injunctions against generic market entry in Apotex Pty Ltd v Warner-Lambert Company LLC (No 2) [2016] FCA 1238 (see our coverage of the case in ‘Carving out the principles: a comparative review of the Australia and UK Lyrica cases’), the Australian Lyrica dispute has continued through…

EPC, EPO, Netherlands

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A new president of the European Patent Organisation, the person who will succeed the controversial president Benoît Battistelli in June 2018, will be chosen this autumn. That is the expectation of Martijn van Dam, Dutch secretary of state for Economic Affairs. Van Dam said this in a debate last week with parliament on the ‘deteriorating…

Case Law, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

On 24 November 2016, the Court of Appeal of Barcelona (Section 15) handed down a judgment in which it confirmed that “the interpretation of the scope of protection of a patent for the purposes of analysing its validity cannot be different from when its infringement is analysed”. The Judges also highlighted the relevance of the…

Case Law, United States of America

(Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US)/

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board erroneously construed the term “aseptic” in an inter partes review (IPR) of a patent for a method of aseptically bottling sterilized food, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. The Board erred in construing the term as incorporating “any applicable United States FDA standard” rather…

Case Law, SEP, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/ /1 Comment

Most readers will be aware of the so-called “all elements” test, whereby patent infringement is normally discarded unless the allegedly infringing device or process reproduces each and every element of the claim. The “all elements” test contrasts with the so-called “essentiality” test. According to this test, there can still be infringement if an element of…

EPO, European Union, Netherlands

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The SUEPO, the biggest trade union at the European Patent Organisation, filed a complaint against The Netherlands before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on 8 May 2017. According to the SUEPO, as host to one of the main offices of the European Patent Office, The Netherlands should have acted to end the breach…

Belgium, Case Law

(Crowell & Moring)/

On April 3, 2017, the latest decision was handed down in the patent revocation battle between medical device manufacturer Nouvag and Jean Malak, a plastic surgeon specialized in liposuction. This conflict has taken on epic proportions, in part because of the ruling rendered by the Belgian Supreme Court on February 3, 2012 confirming that the…

China, Pharma, Pharmaceutical patent

(ZY Partners), (Baker & McKenzie), and (Zy Partners)/

Pharmaceutical polymorph patents are regarded as effective means and important secondary pharmaceutical patents to extend the life cycle of pharmaceutical patent protection. However, the inventiveness evaluation criteria for pharmaceutical polymorph patents have become much stricter in China while the amount of patent application keeps soaring. The clinical research of pharmaceutical polymorphs commenced in 1950s internationally…

Case Law, United States of America

(Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US)/

To the extent that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not provide an explanation for its obviousness rejection of 13 claims of a Securus patent on a system and method for reviewing monitored conversations and identifying items of interest, the ruling was vacated and remanded by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal…