Recently, a number of European IP law professors (and certain lawyers) signed a motion against the EU patent package. The motion mentions 29 signatories of which 13 originate from Belgium. The other signatories are located in France (5), Italy (4), UK (2), Suisse (1), Portugal (1), the Netherlands (1), Sweden (1) and Spain (1). The…
On 24 March, 2015, the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO, the final judicial arbiter of the interpretation of the European Patent Convention, issued Decision G 3/14 addressing the question of when, and to what extent, clarity objections could be raised by a party challenging the validity of a patent through the EPO’s Opposition…
At the end of January, we reported the Warner-Lambert v Actavis decision of 21 January 2015, in which Arnold J refused to grant Warner-Lambert interim relief in relation to an apprehension of patent infringement by Actavis of Warner-Lambert’s patent comprising Swiss-form claims directed to the use of pregabalin in the preparation of a medicament for…
The European business sector and the European Commission have voiced concern about the level of the renewal fees for the Unitary Patent, as proposed by the European Patent Office (EPO). The two EPO proposals for the fee level, often designated as the ‘Top 4 model’ and ‘Top 5 model’ have been discussed on the Kluwer…
The judgement “Schleifprodukt” rendered by the German Federal Court of Justice on 25 November 2014 could be seen as a step towards harmonisation with the EPO because the court carried out the test for the admissibility of claim amendments by assessing whether the feature combination of the amended claim in its entirety represents a technical teaching which is identifiable from the original application as being suitable for achieving the effects of the invention.
Under U.S. patent laws, the 20-year term of a patent can be extended if the USPTO fails to meet certain timeliness benchmarks during the patent examination process. The statute provides for Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) equal to the number of days of USPTO delay, less the number of days of applicant delay. The statute defines…
The District Court The Hague finds that it is competent based on Article 7 Dutch Code of Civil Procedure (Article 6(1) Brussels I / Article 8(1) Brussels Ibis – plurality of defendants) even though the article’s preconditions are no longer met. A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
In the aftermath of the CJEU decisions Eli Lilly/Medeva and Actavis/Georgetown II, the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property proposes changes in its SPC granting practice. One hot topic in connection with the granting of SPCs concerns the question on how to define whether a product is protected by a basic patent (Art. 3 (a)…
The Board of Appeal rejected an attempt to apply the fiction of novelty of “medical” substances and compositions of article 54(5) EPC to a dialysis membrane. Contrary to T2003/08 the claimed dialysis membrane did not contain any further substance that might constitute an active ingredient. With reference to arguments in T2003/08, the board noted that…
The behavior of EPO president Benoît Battistelli is bad for the reputation of the European Patent Office and may in the longer term force him to resign. Wouter Pors, IP practitioner of Bird & Bird, said this in an interview with Kluwer IP Law, on the occasion of a recent decision of the Dutch appeal…
