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…
Will 2017 be the year that the Unitary Patent system sees the light of day? A year ago the general expectation was for the system to fully launch this spring, with a provisional period starting late 2016. After the Brexit vote considerable delays were expected, but an announcement by the UK government late November led…
The Mobile World Congress (“MWC”) is one of the largest trade events taking place in Barcelona. Due to its importance, all relevant institutions, including regional and local governments, do their very best each year to help make the event as successful as possible. These efforts have resulted in, for example, the construction of a new…
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded a Federal Circuit decision upholding a jury’s award of damages to Apple Inc. based on infringement of its design patents by Samsung Electronics, Co. Ltd. At issue was whether, in the case of a multicomponent product, the relevant “article of manufacture” must always be the…
