The occasion of the autumn equinox seemed to be as good a time as any to release the results of the Kluwer Patent Blog summer quiz. Sincere thanks to the 92 people who completed all 20 questions. The results were interesting and genuinely surprising. The highlights were as follows: • No-one got all 20 questions…
By Benjamin Bai and Tyler Xiu The Chinese inventor remuneration laws have been in flux for the last several years. Uncertainties are abundant. The first remuneration case involving a foreign company, Zhang v. 3M, has exacerbated the uncertainties – it seems to call into question if any remuneration policy short of 2% profit sharing would…
‘Europe can become a more attractive forum for patent enforcement than the US’, according to Wouter Pors, partner of Bird & Bird. Kluwer IP Law interviewed him about the new draft proposal for the Rules on the European Patent Litigation Certificate and other appropriate qualifications. ‘We shouldn’t just focus on the minimum requirements.’ Pors expects the…
With the Judges mostly on summer vacation, August and September have given some time for reflection on several decisions from the Patents Courts in July. One of those decisions was another defeat for Rovi against Virgin from the Court of Appeal in Rovi v Virgin [2015] EWCA Civ 781. Floyd LJ. gave the leading judgment…
On 3 June 2015, the High Court of Justice (“Tribunal Superior de Justicia”) of Madrid handed down a judgment which has alerted everyone of the need to have robust systems in place to make sure that a deadline for paying renewal fees is not missed. The facts of the case may be briefly summarised as…
Since 2011, it has been clear in France that the possibility for patent owners to request before the French patent office a limitation of the claims of a granted patent, offered by article L. 613 24 of the French Intellectual Property Code (“IPC”) since 1 January 2009, applies not only to the claims of French patents but also…
A district court’s decision denying awards of attorney fees incurred by several mobile device and digital camera makers in successfully defending against patent infringement claims by Honeywell International Inc. has been vacated and remanded by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The district court was directed to reconsider whether the case was…
In its decision Digitalblock (digital block) the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf (Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf) has discussed the question whether “sleeping” features of a device can cause patent infringement (judgement of 19 February 2015, docket No. I-15 U 39/14). The case was about set-top boxes for receiving free-to-air and encrypted television signals. The patent concerned a…
The District Court of The Hague invalidated two patents for a lack of inventive step. The patents claimed to solve two separate problems of a known production method for glatiramer acetate. The court held that one problem would be solved as a bonus effect of applying common general knowledge. Solving a problem resulting from non-application…
In this case the FCJ discussed the criterion of “equivalence” for a non-literal infringement of a patent. The Court held that one has to assess all technical effects which have to be achieved with the patented features to solve the underlying technical problem. The entire combination of these effects forms the patented solution. For the…
