Case Law, Switzerland

(Lenz & Staehelin)/

If foreign counterparts of a European patent have been declared invalid in five European jurisdictions and the arguments in these court decisions are substantially convincing, the prima facie invalidity of the Swiss part of the same European patent is sufficiently established for the purposes of preliminary injunction proceedings. A full summary of this case has…

Case Law, Norway

(Wikborg Rein)/

The Oslo District Court invalidated the Norwegian patent NO 324 454 B3 on a method intended for the direct detection of oil and gas in subsea reservoirs using electromagnetic measurements due to lack of novelty over four citations. This judgment differed from the English Court of Appeal, which had found that there were no grounds…

Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

One of the issues which will be discussed at the next annual meeting of AIPPI, due to take place in Rio de Janeiro in October 2015, is Q244, entitled “Inventorship of multinational inventions.” In today’s world, it is becoming increasingly frequent for inventions to be the outcome of teamwork conducted by persons from different jurisdictions….

Case Law, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The Patents Court has allowed an application for pre-action disclosure of a subset of patent licences to a potential defendant to a claim for infringement, so as to allow that potential defendant to quantify any claim against it prior to the commencement of proceedings. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer…

France, Revocation

(Véron & Associés)/

Our previous post of June 2014 “Patent revocation actions in France: mind the slot! ” presented and criticized the decision of 25 April 2013 of the tribunal de grande instance de Paris, 3rd chamber, 1st section, Evinerude v. Giraudeau and Aair Lichens, applying to patent revocation actions the new time limitation period of five years adopted by the…

Germany, Injunction, Procedure, Validity

(Rospatt Osten Pross )/

The Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf (Higher Regional Court, appeal instance) just issued a court order on the admissibility of new prior art that the defendant discovered only in the second instance infringement proceedings. The defendant and appellant in the proceedings had requested a stay of the infringement appeal based on this new and relevant prior art until…

Denmark

(Bugge Valentin)/

In one of the ongoing Pregabalin diputes, the Danish specialty court for IPR, the Maritime and Commercial Court in Copenhagen, recently rendered a 50-pages decision in a PI-action filed by Warner-Lambert (“WL”) and Pfizer against Krka and the Danish Association of Pharmacies. The Danish Health Agency intervened in support of the Danish Association of Pharmacies….