Will the upcoming Unified Patent Court be a success? Is opting-out most patents the best option when the new system starts functioning? How will IP litigators and practitioners see their work change? What are the economic consequences for participating countries? Are SME’s benefitting from the Unitary Patent as much as multinationals? Won’t it be too…
In its decision of 7 August 2014 (docket no. I-2 U 91/13 – ‘Garage Roller Door’), the Higher Regional Court Dusseldorf granted a non-using patent co-owner a right to compensation from the other co-owner that uses the patent and profits from this use. The parties are competitors in the field of manufacturing and selling garage…
by Bernward Zollner In a recent decision of the Federal Supreme Court dated 26 August 2014 (docket-No. X ZB 19/12) a further appeal of an applicant pursuing his patent application was rejected. Already the German Patent and Trademark Office had rejected the patent application. The Appeal of the applicant against this decision had been rejected…
The Danish Maritime & Commercial Court recently granted an interlocutory injunction in a patent dispute relating to 2nd medical use claims (Novartis v. Orifarm Generics case A-0006-14)). The Novartis patent claim language included a specification for a TTS (transdermal therapeutic system) for administering Rivastigmine in the treatment of Alzheimers: “Rivastigmine for use in a method…
To the extent that summer 2014 existed at all in central Europe, experts agree that it is now definitely over. There is some controversy whether we ever had summer in Germany this year, but at least it was proven that life without air conditioning is possible. Meanwhile, the Munich IP Community is busily preparing for…
1. Introduction Preliminary injunction (“PI”) and seizure proceedings are powerful weapons in the hands of patentees in Belgium. Often, the success of a product launch and the outcome of a patent dispute will in practice be determined by a PI or seizure that prevents or ceases market entry by the alleged infringer. In the context of…
As readers well know, over the years many patent offices around the world have opened the door to the patentability of so-called “second medical uses” to foster research on possible solutions to unmet medical needs based on the use of already known compounds. Although the most developed patent offices such as the European Patent Office…
Tribunal de grande instance de Paris, 3rd chamber, 1st section, 3 July 2014, Evinerude v. Philippe Giraudeau and Aair Lichens While the US decisions in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories Inc. and Myriad Genetics led the USPTO to issue new guidelines to the attention of examiners on the procedure for subject matter eligibility analysis of claims reciting or involving “interalia” laws of nature and…
As the readers well know, the European Patent Convention (“EPC”) system allows the validity of European patents to be challenged through two different routes: (i) oppositions filed before the European Patent Office (“EPO”); and (ii) revocation actions filed before national Courts. This system, which has its advantages, has disadvantages as well. For example, it may…
In the oral proceedings held in the EPO appeal case T 1760/11 the Board of Appeal (BoA) 3.3.01 selected one single closest prior art (CPA) document for the inventive step assessment and then denied the opponents the opportunity to present inventive step attacks starting from other CPAs. Petitions for review under Article 112a EPC were…
