Friday 1st April was the final day of the Fordham conference. This short report summarises one of the more interesting patent-focused sessions which dealt with second medical use issues. Brian Cordery from Bristows set the scene. He briefly referred to some of the recent European decisions on Swiss-type claims, particularly the pregabalin and pemetrexed cases….
As a foreign spectator of the litigation between Actavis and Eli Lilly (Alimta®) before the English Patents Court (the Hon. Mr. Justice Arnold), this author was fascinated by the ease with which the Court allowed Actavis to add endless new petitions to its declaratory non-infringement action (“DNA”), particularly taking into account that the DNA was…
For 2016, the Fordham Conference has returned to its home on the Upper West side of Manhattan. In the meantime, the Institute has been rebuilt and the shabby-chic has been replaced with a state of the art new facility. The sun shone on your author (both figuratively and literally) this morning as the programme compilers…
There was a time where appeal before the EPO could be used to revisit anything that went wrong or was omitted in opposition proceedings. Since 2003, when the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA) were amended, the situation has changed. The Boards of Appeal, confronted with an increasing workload and with cases…
For nearly a decade the Latvian regulators have struggled with determining the future perspective for resolving intellectual property related disputes before the Patent Office of the Republic of Latvia (LPO). Already in 2007 the responsible authorities identified several shortcomings in domestic legislation: among others, it became apparent that the disputes concerning appeals and oppositions brought…
The Spanish Patents and Trademarks Office (“SPTO”) has submitted the draft of the Implementing Regulations of the new Spanish Patents Act, which is due to come into force on 1 April 2017, for public consultation. In general, anybody familiar with the Implementing Regulations to the European Patent Convention (“EPC”) would not have great difficulty navigating…
A patent application was properly denied on the basis that it covered the abstract idea of rules for playing a wagering game and used conventional steps of shuffling and dealing a standard deck of cards, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (In re Ray Smith and Amanda Tears Smith, March…
The U.K. Patents Court has held Warner-Lambert’s second medical use patent regarding the use of pregabalin for the treatment of pain invalid on the ground of insufficiency. Even if the patent were valid, the Court held that Actavis would not have infringed Warner-Lambert’s patent as a result of any “cross-label” use of their product sold…
Although patentability is generally regarded as a question of law per se, the actual technical disclosure of a prior art example was seen as a question of fact and therefore a matter for the first-instance court. The Federal Court of Justice saw itself bound to facts determined by the first-instance court, unless there are specific…
Europe is preparing for the launch of the new Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court (UPC). A provisional phase for the UPC is expected to start later this year, with a view to a full start of the system in the spring of 2017. In a series of articles, Kluwer IP Law explains the…
