by Steven Willis Judgments from the Courts of England and Wales concerned with the construction of patents will invariably cite the classic formulation of Lord Diplock from Catnic Components v Hill & Smith Ltd [1982] R.P.C. when addressing the identity of the person skilled in the art: “…a patent specification is a unilateral statement by…

A federal district court did not err in finding that Genius Electronic Optical, a supplier of camera lenses for Apple’s iPhone and iPad products, did not induce the infringement of five camera-lens patents held by Largan Precision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled (Largan Precision Co., Ltd. v. Genius Electronic…

A former employee inventor’s obligation to sign a declaration of assignment of a patent application to the former employer can be enforced in summary proceedings pursuant to the Swiss Code of Civil Procedure’s provisions regarding “Clear Cases”, under threat of a criminal penalty against the former employee, and even after the termination of the employment…

Increasing the (grounds of the) claim at a late stage of the proceedings in accelerated patent proceedings is contrary to due process of law. The claimed printer cartridge is not novel since no structural (technical) features distinguish the patent from the prior art. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP…

According to article 66 of the Spanish Patents Act, in case of moral damages the patent owner will be entitled to compensation even if the existence of an economic damage has not been proven. In addition, according to article 68 “the holder of a patent may also claim for indemnification for damage resulting from the…

By Jill (Yijun) Ge and Benjamin Bai We discussed when an IP owner might become an IP abuser previously (http://kluwerpatentblog.com/2016/03/08/crossing-the-rubicon-when-does-ip-owner-become-ip-abuser/). For standard essential patent (“SEP”) holders, one lingering question is whether they can still seek and enforce injunctions. Some take the view that the act of seeking injunctive relief is inherently inconsistent with an SEP…

European patent attorneys should make a joint effort and gather data to assess the impact of procedural  issues on opposition procedures at the European Patent Office and, in the future, on  decisions of the Unified Patent Court. Michael Wallinger, partner of law firm WRST, proposed this at the annual meeting of the European Patent Litigators…