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…
Last Saturday (1 April 2017) the Spanish Official Gazette (“Boletín Oficial del Estado”) published Royal Decree 316/2017, dated 31 March, containing the Implementing Regulations of the Patents Act 24/2015, of 24 July. As readers will remember from previous blogs, the new Patents Act, which, among other aspects, introduced the compulsory examination of substantive patentability requirements,…
How long should proceedings before the EPO ideally take? Admittedly, this is a tricky question because various stakeholders will usually have different interests and thoughts as to what the “right” or “ideal” speed is. Let us tackle this question by beginning with a simple distinction. I posit that the answer depends considerably on whether the…
‘The UK will ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) in March, most likely before the Brexit article 50 is triggered.’ It was only last month this scenario was described by the UPC Preparatory Committee during a conference in Amsterdam. By now, we know this has been overly optimistic, but is it a problem for the…
Spain will not join the Unitary Patent system. That became clear today during a session of the Spanish parliament. Earlier this month, the parliamentary committee for economics, industry and competitiveness had approved a motion of the socialist party PSOE, requesting the government to reconsider joining the system. Only the Popular Party, which runs the minority…
