Call them “junk patents” or “low quality patents”, however you’d label China’s utility model patents; earlier this year, a utility model patent owner obtained a damages award of USD6 million and a permanent injunction for the infringement of such a patent. This is likely to be the second largest damages award after the famous USD48.5m…
On 18 December 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) published a landmark judgment in Case C-364/13 International Stem Cell Corporation v. Comptroller General of Patents, in which it gave the following reply to a question referred by the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division (Patents Court), of England and Wales regarding…
Last week, we reported on the challenging endeavour to set up Patent Translate, the machine translation system which is under joint development by the European Patent Organisation (EPO) and Google and which is a crucial element of the Unitary Patent (UP) package. Intellectual Property Office (IPO) officials from Hungary, Finland and the Czech Republic told…
In its decision of 1 December 2014, the Brussels Court of Appeal clarified the scope of seizure measures that can be ordered in the context of a counterfeit seizure (“saisie-contrefaçon”). The Court confirmed that no general injunction can be obtained on the basis of these ex parte proceedings. This case relates to the co-irbesartan litigation…
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…
