Case Law, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

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…

Brexit, European Union, NPE, Unitary Patent, United Kingdom, UPC

/

Although patent litigation in Europe is fragmented, businesses have been able to cope and a unitary system may not be strictly necessary for the patent system to function in Europe. However, the new UPC does represent an opportunity to improve the system via greater efficiency and consistency.  Dr Luke McDonagh of the Law School at…

United Kingdom

, (EIP)/

While the subject of the appropriate court fees to pay when issuing proceedings is not normally an exciting one to write about (indeed some readers of this post will say that this remains the case) a recent application concerning the appropriate fees to pay in a trade mark action (Lifestyles Equities CV v Sportsdirect.com Retail…

Case Law, EPO, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

One of the possible methods to examine incentive activity is what is known as the “problem and solution approach” usually applied by the European Patent Office (“EPO”). Spanish Courts like this methodology, as it allows the Judge to subject the opinions expressed by the experts to an objective test. For example, in a judgment of…

Australia, Extent of Protection, NPE, Scope of protection, Validity

, (Clayton Utz)/

On 22 July 2016, IP Australia approved a patent specification involving computer programming in poker machines in Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited [2016] APO 49. IP Australia’s decision comes on the heels of the High Court of Australia’s approval of the Full Federal Court decision in Commissioner of Patents v RPL Central Pty Ltd [2015]…

Case Law, United States of America

(Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US)/

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err in affirming a patent examiner’s rejection of three claims of an IPCom patent on a system for allowing access rights to cell phone channels, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled. Because all three claims were anticipated by the GSM 04.60 Specifications,…

Case Law, EPO, EPO Decision

(V.O.)/

An EPO board held that observations filed by third parties during inter partes appeal must be disregarded by the board, unless they concern amendments during opposition or appeal, in which case the board has discretion whether or not to consider the observations in the examination of the amendments. Also when a party to the appeal…