In a decision to refund an additional search fee, an EPO board rejected a determination of non-unity based on a priori technical differences, which determined different problems solved by different dependent claims without determining patentability with respect to the available prior art found for the independent claim. Instead, lack of unity should be decided based…
Obtaining an authorization to introduce generic medicaments into the market before the expiration of a patent as well as transferring the authorization to third parties does not infringe patent rights in substances used in those medicaments. Nevertheless, the exploitation of such medicaments can only take place upon the expiration of the patent or the respective…
Medical device manufacturer TriReme Medical, LLC had standing to pursue a claim to correct the inventorship of three patents owned by competitor AngioScore, Inc., based on an assignment from a physician who allegedly contributed to the development of the angioplasty balloon catheter claimed in the patents, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit…
Alexander Ramsey is the chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court (UPC). He has set the ambitious goal to finish his work by June 2016 with a view to the UPC opening early 2017. Court fees, recruitment and training of judges and fine-tuning of the IT-system are just a few of the…
Case reported and summarized by Gregory Bacon, Bristows LLP Mr Justice Carr is only a few months into his judicial career, but having already provided welcome guidance on the role of plausibility in considering both the questions of inventive step and sufficiency (see earlier blog post on Actavis v Eli Lilly), he has now produced…
In a recent PI case decided by the Danish Maritime & Commercial Court (MCC), the Court ruled on the several aspects pertaining to the presumption of validity of a granted patent together with infringement as well the formal preconditions for granting a PI, i.e. urgency and passivity. The parties to the case were both active…
The big picture for the Unitary Patent (UP) and the Unified Patent Court (UPC) may be clear for the patent attorneys, lawyers and other experts who will soon have to deal with the new European patent system. However, there’ll be many surprises in the details. During the second day of the Unitary Patent Package Conference,…
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, for example, in the construction of a new…
We are ready, are you? The ‘last steps’ towards the introduction of the Unitary Patent (UP) system were a recurring theme on the first day of the Unitary Patent Package Conference in Amsterdam. A lot of experts and specialists who are closely involved in the creation of the UP and the Unified Patent Court (UPC)…
In finding that all of the claims of Cutsforth’s U.S. Patent No. 7,990,018 (“the ’018 patent”) were obvious in light of the prior art, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board erred in failing to explain its reasoning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has decided (Cutsforth, Inc. v. MotivePower, Inc., January 22,…
