The European Commission has taken the first step towards creating a European Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC). A Call for Tender for a ‘Study on the legal aspects of the supplementary protection certificates in EU’ was published last month. The deadline for the Call for Tender is 4 February 2016. After signing a contract, the study…

As readers well know, according to article 56 of the European Patent Convention “an invention shall be considered as involving an inventive step if, having regard to the state of the art, it is not obvious to a person skilled in the art.” In practice, the application of this article requires factual and legal assessments…

On Friday 22 January 2016, the annual ERA (Academy of European Law) conference on the Unitary Patent took place in Brussels. Regarding the agreement reached on the renewal fees, Clemens Heusch, head of European litigation at Nokia, explained that although Nokia currently has more than 30,000 (!) patent families in its patent portfolio, he finds…

Finland became the ninth country to ratify the UPC Agreement when President Sauli Niinistö signed the law on its ratification on 8th of January 2016. The Parliament approved the ratification in December 2015, following the Judiciary Committee’s report on the 6th of November 2015 and the Constitutional Committee’s report on the 17th of November 2015,…

A recent decision at the UK Intellectual Property Office emphasises again how important it is to establish ownership of rights in inventions (particularly before the first patent application is filed) and to have documentary evidence to support this. The case concerns a dispute between the University of Warwick and one of its employees over the…

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err in affirming the rejection of several claims of a patent application directed to a method of enzymatic hydrolysis of soy fiber suitable as a food additive on the ground of obviousness, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has determined (In re Urbanski, January…

The Federal Court of Justice held that claim construction has absolute priority before issues of invalidity, such as the inadmissible extension or issues of patentability of the subject matter, can be discussed. The Court also reiterated that the determination of the subject matter of a patent (the invention) cannot be abandoned with the mere reason…