The German ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement will most likely be decisive for the moment when the Unified Patent Court comes into existence. In an interview on recent developments regarding the UPC, Bird & Bird partner Wouter Pors told Kluwer IP Law that the Preparatory Committee and Member States are in contact to…
For Europeans who don’t speak English, German or French, the three official Unitary Patent (UP) languages, the future UP system will bring about an even more radical change than for those that do. Over the years, millions of patents from companies all over the world will have been held valid in their territory, although these…
The Italian Supreme Court recently (and surprisingly) said that inventors must be named as co-defendants in revocation actions. In 2010 I wrote a post concerning the requirement to name inventors as co-defendants in Italian revocation actions. I reported that the Court of Appeal of Milan had established a principle whereby named inventors had to be called…
As the readers will know, on 18 November 2014, Advocate General Yves Bot published his conclusions in cases C-146/13 and C-147/13, whereby he has proposed that the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) reject the nullity actions filed by the Kingdom of Spain against Regulation (EU) 1257/2012 (Enhanced cooperation) and 1260/2012 (Translation arrangements)…
Literature and litigation go hand in hand. My fellow contributors aptly illustrated this, their recent posts moving to the cadence of the language of Shakespeare and Montesquieu. To follow their footsteps, but on a more contemporary note on a future (some suggest: fantasy) subject: “Brace yourselves, Winter is coming.” Well, Winter is not coming. At…
On August 31, 2014 the Chinese legislature approved a resolution to establish specialized IP courts in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. By early November, the Beijing IP Court was operational and had begun to take cases, with 28 being filed in the first four working days. The Guangzhou IP Court is expected to be operational around…
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu knew it all as early as 1748: “Experience teaches that every human being who has the power tends to abuse it. Therefore, it is necessary that the power sets limits to the power. There are three things in every state authority: the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. There…
by Miriam Büttner In a recent decision the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on the maximum period of exclusivity of a patent and a supplementary protection certificate (SPC) (Order of the Court dated 13 February 2014 – case no C-555/13, Merck Canada Inc. vs. Accord Healthcare Ltd and others). Background: Merck Canada Inc. (Merck)…
We have previously reported (post 28 August 2012) on ongoing litigation in Denmark between DuPont/Danisco and Novozymes resulting at the time in the grant of an interlocutory injunction being firstly granted and then revoked as the patent-in-suit was subsequently invalidated. In a more recent development, DuPont/Danisco filed suit at the Maritime & Commercial Court (MCC)…
Time is closing in on two of the most hotly debated issues of the Unitary Patent (UP) package: the level of the UP renewal fees and the distribution key for the partition of these fees between participating Member States. Work on the latter, politically highly sensitive, issue was launched at the 10th meeting of the…
