1. History One of the most precious achievements that Europe inherited from England is the so-called Rule of Law, dating back from the days of James I who ruled the union of the Scottish and English crowns from 1603 until his death in 1625. The key parts of this model is that laws are made…
The decision today of the UK High Court that the government cannot trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and begin formal exit negotiations with the EU without approval of Parliament, is a setback for the UK prime minister Theresa May and increases the uncertainty regarding the Unitary Patent system. May had argued the government…
Protecting companies’ confidential business and technical information – “trade secrets” – is becoming a major priority of the private sector and governments around the world. For good reason: one in five European companies has been the victim of trade secret misappropriation, or attempts at misappropriation, at least once in the past 10 years, and for…
The Court of Appeal of Barcelona (Section 15) recently upheld an appeal filed by a manufacturer of security systems against a judgment that had dismissed a patent infringement action filed against a former distributor who was manufacturing duplicates of the keys used in such system. Claim 1 of the patent reads as follows: “Security reversible-key…
by Dr. André Sabellek In a recent judgment the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) took a stand on the question whether to grant the patent infringer a grace period for marketing the infringing products for a certain time after the final judgment (judgment of May 10, 2016, court docket: X ZR 114/13 – Wärmetauscher [heat…
The Patents Court (Birss J) held that medac’s patent EP (UK) 2 046 332 relating to the use of a formulation of methotrexate at a concentration of about 50 mg/ml for the treatment of individuals with inflammatory autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) by subcutaneous injection, was obvious over one of the prior art…
Actavis Laboratories UT, Inc. was unable to show that patents licensed to Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc. covering its testosterone gel product Fortesta® were invalid as obvious in light of prior art, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Therefore, a district court ruling finding that the patents were not obvious was affirmed…
The Federal Court of Justice held that claim construction is the core task of a court dealing with infringement and that this must be done independently from the claim construction as used by the FCJ in a previous nullity decision about that same patent. The Court explicitly stated that there is no legal or factual…
The Finnish Market Court, as the court of first instance, ruled that the reversed burden of proof which is applied in infringement proceedings involving patents granted for manufacturing processes of novel products is also applicable in preliminary injunction matters. As the parties had submitted completely contrary expert opinions, which could not be assessed within the…
The Legal Board of Appeal of the EPO rejected the decision of the examining division that additional claim fees were due at the start of examination for claims added with the response to the international search report under Rule 161(1) EPC, even if at the end of the 31 month period the claims did not…
