Arbitration courts have competence to declare the invalidity of an allegedly infringed patent where the question is raised as an incidental defence. The decision only has inter partes effects. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
If reaction from business to the Unified Patent Court is good, it will definitely be a challenge for the new management of the Court. Eileen Tottle, Head of the Secretariat of the UPC Preparatory Committee, said this in an interview with Kluwer IP Law. ‘Setting up a completely new business, which is of course is…
Okay, this result, which was recently reached by TBA 3.3.04 in decision T 394/11 (in German language), may perhaps not come as a big surprise to you, since we all learnt in school that acetic acid is a classic example of an organic acid as opposed to an inorganic acid. Yet it raises two interesting…
The UPC Preparatory Committee has announced the selection of judges will start soon. During its 15th meeting, on 14 April 2016 in Luxembourg, agreement was reached on the recruitment package. In its report on the meeting the Preparatory Committee writes this means ‘adverts for judicial appointments can be advertised in May. The exact date of…
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…
In ten to fifteen years, the current differences between European patent attorneys (EPAs), lawyers and patent litigators will have diminished and a there will be a new category of professionals, who are experts in litigation at the Unified Patent Court (UPC) . This is the expectation of Koen Bijvank, president of the European Patent Litigators…
If conflicts arise under the Unitary Patent system, parties have the option to go to the Unified Patent Court (UPC), or they can agree to go the court’s Patent and Mediation Centre (PMAC). In their current version, the Rules on Arbitration and Mediation do not provide for the possibility of Judges of the UPC to…
The UK IPO (the British bureau for intellectual property) recently made clear to various stakeholders that the proceedings for British approval of the agreement on a Unified Patent Court, better known as the “UPC Agreement”) continue. The UK IPO mentioned however that the UPC Agreement will probably be voted upon only after the British EU…
In its decision of December 15, 2015 the Federal Court of Justice confirmed the judgment of the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court of 2014 concerning the direct infringement of use patents by manifest arrangement. In this case the defendants had manufactured insulation material made of glass fibres and sold it to the building industry in Germany….
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has decided not to grant requests for and en banc rehearing of an earlier panel decision holding that the International Trade Commission (“ITC” or “Commission”) lacks the authority to prevent the importation of infringing electronic files into the United States (ClearCorrect Operating, LLC v. International Trade…
