In this case the FCJ expanded on earlier case law regarding claim construction, in particular how a term used in the claim language should be interpreted in light of the specification and the entire set of claims. The Court held that the subject matter of the main claim can generally not be limited by a…
Two patents directed to a method for the electronic trading of stocks, bonds, futures, and options asserted by Trading Technologies International (TTI) against the CQG companies were not directed to an abstract idea and also recited an inventive concept, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled. In affirming a federal district…
The Board of Appeal decided that the invention was not sufficiently disclosed, as no seeds had been deposited and a skilled person could not obtain the claimed plants on the basis of the information in the application. More specifically, it was not possible for the skilled person to ascertain what the parental strain “Capsicum annuum…
The European Patent Office can invoke its immunity from jurisdiction of Dutch courts in its conflict with the EPO trade unions SUEPO and VEOB. The highest court in The Netherlands, the Hoge Raad, has ruled so today. The Supreme Court set aside a decision of the so-called Gerechtshof, which had ruled to the contrary in…
Since the UK announced it wants to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement despite the Brexit vote (last week the new IP minister of the UK, Jo Johnson, repeated the announcement of his predecessor Baroness Neville-Rolfe), preparations for the system have restarted in full, despite the fact that a British membership brings about uncertainty. Prof….
by Steven Willis In a judgment handed down at the end of last week, Arnold J has indicated his intention to make a reference to the CJEU concerning the interpretation of Article 3(d) of the SPC Regulation i.e. the requirement for the marketing authorisation (“MA”) on which an SPC application is based to be the…
The Preparatory Committee for the Unified Patent Court (UPC) expects the court to become operational in December of this year, with the Provisional Application Phase (PAP) starting by the end of spring 2017, probably in May. This has been announced on the committee’s website. According to the announcement, ‘the start of the sunrise-period for the…
In this case the FCJ dealt with the prerequisites for equivalent infringement. In particular it gave further guidance in relation to the so-called “3rd Schneidmesser question” which concerns the parity of a variant with the patented solution. The FCJ held that the considerations of the skilled person leading to an assessment of the variant as…
A federal district court erred in ruling that 34 claims of a patent on a system and method of using a graphical indicator were invalid as indefinite, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled. Because a skilled artisan would understand, with reasonable certainty, the meaning of the term “visually negligible,” and…
Although it did not admit a broader claim 1, an EPO board of appeal allowed an auxiliary request wherein claim 1 as granted was replaced by a combination of independent claims from different first instance requests. This combination was admitted because the first instance department had had the opportunity to decide on both claims in…
