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…
To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the top 3 most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the top posts from January and February 2017. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
Once the UPC opens its doors, expectedly on 1 December 2017, a whole new European patent system will start taking shape. An exciting challenge for the future judges of the court, who will have to bring into practice a set of brand new Rules of Procedure and find common ground despite their different backgrounds and…
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err in finding that certain claims of Slot Speaker Technologies, Inc.’s sound reproduction system patent were invalid as obvious in light of prior art, according to the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit. However, the Board erred in holding that a third claim was not…
The Court of Appeal dismissed Boehringer Ingelheim’s application for permission to appeal the first instance Patents Court decision that EP (UK) 1,379,220 lacked inventive step. The Court of Appeal also considered and overturned the existing judicial guidance on granting permission to appeal in patent matters. A full summary of this case has been published on…
In this case the FCJ considered the question of when the enforcement of a judgment in an infringement action should be suspended in light of a decision of the Federal Patent Court in a parallel nullity action concerning the same patent. The Court held that there is no reason for a suspension if the patent…
The Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court upheld a first instance judgment annulling the decision of the Bulgarian Patent Office to refuse the grant of a supplementary protection certificate for a medical product where the active ingredient was functionally defined in the patent claims rather than through its structural formula. A full summary of this case has…
How to prepare for the upcoming Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court, which are expected to start functioning on 1 December of this year? In a guest post, Wouter Pors, partner of Bird & Bird in The Hague, discusses licensing, co-ownership, opting-out and other important features of the new system and explains that patent…
