‘The patent community lives today after many dark years in the sunrise period in which owners of patents have to decide if after June 1st, they want to be on the sunny beaches of the UPC or prefer to live another 7 or 14 years in the dark forests of national patent litigation.’ Those were…
From the company name of an appellant alone it can generally not be derived that the appellant does not meet the conditions of Rule 6(4,5) EPC for payment of the reduced appeal fee. This applies even where a company name is well-known. Where it is not clear from the file at the end of the…
In an earlier post I explained the issues that the proposed EU Regulation on SEPs intends to address, and why neither the market nor the courts solve them. Here, I discuss three points of critique brought against the Proposal: that it would reduce innovation incentives; that a family-level essentiality assessment would be too imprecise; and…
The Unified Patent Court has announced that starting 29 May 2023 external users will be able to practice entry into force (EIF) functionalities on a dedicated CMS platform. The environment will be the same as the current sunrise practice CERUS, on which the EIF functionalities will be activated. There is no end date for the…
His Honour Judge Hacon handed down judgment in AutoStore v Ocado on 30 March 2023. The case was atypical in that it had a split trial: the first part of the trial considered whether AutoStore’s patents (EP 794 and EP 027) were rendered invalid by prior disclosures made in Russia, the second part considered “technical…
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) did not err by declining to consider a patentee’s claim construction arguments raised for the first time at oral argument. The holder of a patent for retail point-of-sale of cards allowing a purchaser to download specified content from the internet was not entitled to reversal of a PTAB…
The Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) Regulation Proposal also known as the IP Action Plan formally issued by the European Commission today suggests groundbreaking changes to the standard essential patent landscape as we know it. The SEPs Regulation Proposal indicates the European Commission’s desire to establish four major requirements for SEPs holders and implementers. These are…
After years of preparation, the European Union’s draft legislation for a sweeping reform of the existing legal regime on supplementary protection certificates (SPCs), which includes the establishment of a centralized SPC filing and examination procedure as well as the introduction of a unitary SPC, has finally been published today on April 27, 2023. This draft…
When the European Commission earlier today published the legislative proposals aimed at introducing a unitary SPC to be examined by a central examination procedure, one of the Beatle’s most beautiful songs immediately sprang to mind: The Long and Winding Road. In particular, the European Commission has published several legislative proposals, four of which are relevant…
The Unified Patent Court has designated the presiding judges of the central, local and regional divisions, as well as presiding judges of the relevant panels of the Court. By decision of the UPC’s presidium, which was published yesterday, the following judges were designated: Central division PARIS: Ms Florence Butin Central division MUNICH section: Ms Ulrike…
