Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

On 12 March 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) published the judgment announced in our last blog in Case C-577/13, in response to some of the preliminary questions referred by the High Court of Justice (England and Wales), Chancery Division (Patents Court) in a case between Actavis Group EHF, Actavis UK…

United States of America

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Nine claims of a SynQor patent for a high efficiency power converter were anticipated by the combination of two prior art references that taught DC-to-DC power converters for pulsed loads, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled (Vicor Corp. v. SynQor, Inc., March 13, 2015, Clevenger, R.). Because the combined references…

United States of America

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The Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err in affirming a patent examiner’s obviousness rejection of an application that disclosed a system for using two-way communication satellites to regulate the activation of a vehicle’s ignition, based on a driver’s mental state as determined by response times, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal…

European Union, SPC

(Clifford Chance)/

The Supplementary Protection Certificate (“SPC”) seas have been relatively calm after the turmoil caused by “Super Thursday” (i.e. 12 December 2013), when shortly before packing for Christmas the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) published three judgments on SPCs in a row. However, over the last few months there have been recent developments,…

Case Law, EPC, EPO Decision, Inventive step, Kluwer Patent Cases

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The Board emphasized that there was a relation between who was to be considered to be the skilled person for judging inventive step on one hand and the choice of the closest prior art on the other hand. A general problem to modify a product from one field so that it could be used in…

Biologics, Case Law, EPC, EPO Decision, Kluwer Patent Cases

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Inventions regarding a method of improving the yield of triploid seedless watermelons by pollination with a specific type of diploid water melon are not to be regarded as an essentially biological process for the production of plants and are therefore not excluded from patentability under Article 53(b) EPC. These biotechnological inventions according to Rule 26(2),…

Case Law, Kluwer Patent Cases, Netherlands

(Brinkhof)/

Direct access to seized documents, selected from a larger pool of previously seized evidence, is denied on the basis of Dutch procedural provisions relating to Directive 2004/48/EC, because the defendant has not been allowed prior review of the seized selection. The court only allows access to a limited selection obtained by sufficient specific key word…