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…
We reported recently that the IPCom Guidelines which set out when the English Court should stay patent actions pending EPO oppositions appear to be “More honour’d in the breach than the observance”. This had been in response to the decision of Arnold J of 10 July 2014 who had refused to grant such a stay…
PI proceedings have always been a powerful weapon for patentees in Belgium. In such proceedings before the President of the Commercial Court a full legal analysis of the parties’ rights cannot be made. The President will only prima facie asses the parties’ rights and claims. As a result, invalidity arguments are not taken into account given…
It is perhaps a poor reflection on the CJEU that it regularly issues rulings that, when the case is restored before the referring court, lead both parties to an action to claim victory. However this happened yet again when Warren J was given the unenviable task of implementing one of the trio of references decided…
On 17 July 2014, Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalón issued his opinion in Case C-364/13 International Stem Cell Corporation v. Comptroller General of Patents, whereby he proposed that the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) give the following response to a question referred by the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division (Patents Court),…
Since the announcement of the establishment of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and Unitary Patent (UP) for Europe there has been much speculation concerning the potential positives and negatives of the new system, but little empirical evidence has been provided on the subject. For this reason, in January 2014 the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO)…
The FCJ held that the priority of an earlier application may be rightfully claimed if the technical information described for a specific embodiment or otherwise in in the application is seen by the skilled person as an example for the more general invention disclosed in the later application and if this more general teaching was…
Almost everyday someone posts something about the Unified Patent Court or a seminar is offered about the “newest” developments. In fact nobody is able to predict whether the system will “work”. It is said that in order “to be successful” the system needs to be efficient, speedy and affordable. It is also said that it…
