The Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err when it concluded that the claims of a patent relating to the use of descriptive text combined with a rollover viewing area in the user interface of an Internet search engine were unpatentable as obvious in light of prior art, the U.S. Court of Appeals for…
The UK Patents Court upheld the validity of Wyeth’s patent EP(UK) 2,343,308 relating to a combination product comprising a 2086 protein and a PorA protein used in meningitis B vaccines, rejecting GSK’s allegations of lack of entitlement to two of the claimed priority dates, lack of novelty, obviousness (both conventional and so-called “AgrEvo” obviousness), insufficiency…
The High Court has granted the Claimants’ request for declarations of non-infringement (“DNIs”) regarding several national designations of the Defendant’s European Patent for a pemetrexed disodium and vitamin B12 combination in respect of reconstitution of the Claimants’ lyophilised pemetrexed product when reconstituted in dextrose solution. The issues in this case were remitted by the Court…
The Federal Court of Justice held that the defence of the patent in suit on the basis of claims filed only at the appeal stage as an auxiliary request can nevertheless be considered to be expedient if the Patent Court had only informed the Defendant in the oral proceedings that it no longer intended to…
The Federal Supreme Court confirmed the Federal Patent Court’s three-step function, accessibility and equal value test to analyse infringement under the doctrine of equivalents. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
The Spanish Parliament, the Congreso de los Diputados, surprisingly adopted a non-binding motion on 7 March 2017, requesting the government to join the Unitary Patent system. Spain has been the only EU member state to stay completely out of this new European patent system, that is expected to start functioning in December of this year…
The Spanish parliament will vote today on a non-binding motion of the socialist opposition party PSOE, which calls on the government to reconsider joining the Unitary Patent system. The motion was filed last month by MP Patricia Blanquer. According to Blanquer, Spain should no longer stay on the side-line now that the system is about…
1 Background In the past several years, the Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) of China has been working on establishing a precedent system appropriate for China. In 2010, the SPC launched the Guiding Cases System (“GCS”). Under the GCS, the SPC each year selects and publishes certain representative cases from all level of courts as Guiding…
One of the objectives of the new Patents Act that is to come into force on 1 April 2017 is to prompt a higher level of specialization of Judges dealing with patent cases. In particular, article 118 assigns jurisdiction to hear patent cases to a sub-group of Courts within the general group of “Commercial Courts”…
by Naomi Hazenberg and Olivia Henry The Court of Appeal has handed down judgment in IPCom v HTC ([2017] EWCA Civ 90), the latest instalment of the long running UK litigation on European Patent (UK) 1 841 268. Floyd LJ, writing the leading judgment, allowed IPCom’s appeal and dismissed HTC’s cross-appeal finding the patent (as…
