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…
The new Spanish Patent Act, which will come into force on 1 April 2017, will introduce a modernised “utility model” that is expected to become the natural alternative for “non-examined” patents, which the new law has put at bay. One of the most controversial provisions dealing with utility models is Article 137, which reads as…
by Bernward Zollner for rospatt osten pross In a recent decision of 10 January 2017 (BGH X ZR 17/13) concerning a “Restitutionsklage” against a final patent infringement judgement of the Appeal Court Düsseldorf the German “Bundesgerichtshof” has broadened the scope of the doctrine which the court has developed under the heading “Crimp-Werkzeug”. This doctrine was…
Pharmaceuticals company Watson’s proposed generic version of competitor Shire’s brand-name mesalamine LIALDA® did not satisfy the requirements for a Markush group claimed by a Shire patent, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. A compound contained in the ANDA product—which was not present in the patent claim’s Markush group—structurally and functionally…
Provisional measures, notably the interlocutory injunction provided for by Article 338-I of the Portuguese Code of Industrial Property, do not extend to the provisional protection of a European patent, nor to a national patent the translation of which is not yet published, because there is an insufficent degree of fumus boni iuris as the protection…
In relation to a dispute concerning the novelty of one invention, the Court held that testing a new product in a special laboratory under contract is not public as such. The testing process and its results are not usually available to third parties, so it cannot be equated to disclosure of information about the product…
The court upheld the decision that the patent applications in question had been appropriately considered and that the examiner had established that there were formal reasons for refusing the patent applications. It also ruled that since the patent applications had been refused solely on formal grounds, the Plaintiff still had the right to file those…
Australia ended 2016 flipping through the pages of the Productivity Commission’s final Inquiry Report on Australia’s Intellectual Property Arrangements. In general, the Commission considers that IP rights encourage innovation, but are not always necessary for it and can often be used harmfully. The proposed changes are aimed at balancing the interests of rights holders with…
Italy has ratified the Unified Patent Court Agreement. It is the 12th member state of the Unitary Patent project to do so. The instrument of ratification, the formal final step in the procedure, was deposited with the EU Council on 10 February 2017. The two chambers of the Italian Parliament had approved the ratification bill…
