Section 70 of the UK’s 1977 Patents Act “the Act” (as shown below) creates a cause of action against a party that issues groundless threats of patent infringement: (1) Where a person (whether or not the proprietor of, or entitled to any right in, a patent) by circulars, advertisements or otherwise threatens another person with…
Earlier this year the Federal Patent Court published its annual report for the business year 2012. The report provides an overview of the businesses and procedures during the new Swiss Patent Court’s first year. The number of cases which was submitted to the Federal Patent Court in its first business year corresponded to the expectations….
As the readers will know, one of the possible methods used by the European Patent Office (“EPO”) to examine inventive step is the so-called “problem & solution” approach, which has three parts: i) determining the closest prior art; ii) defining the technical problem that the invention seeks to resolve; and (iii) examining whether or not,…
by Rüdiger Pansch for rospatt osten pross Assuming that “it is sensible for national courts at least to learn from each other and to seek to move towards, rather than away from, each other’s approaches” (Lord Neuberger, Schütz vs Werit, House of Lords judgment of 13 March 2013 at no. 40, [2013] UKSC 16) how…
The first set of “technical corrections” to the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) was enacted on January 14, 2013. While this legislation did make “technical” corrections to some of the new AIA provisions, it also made substantive changes to both the AIA and other provisions of U.S. patent law, including the Patent Term Adjustment (PTA)…
The final week in July is always a busy time in the English Courts as Judges try to hand down judgments before the commencement of the summer vacation which lasts approximately two months. 2013 was no exception with three important patent decisions being given this week– two from the Court of Appeal on the same…
The Mannheim Regional Court decided on March 8, 2013 (court docket: 7 O 139/12) that a supplier which is located abroad is regularly only liable for participating in patent-infringing acts in Germany if the foreign supplier learns, e.g. by means of a warning letter, that its supply of products to the German market may result in a patent infringement under German law and if the supplier does not refrain from further shipments into Germany.
And Carissa Kendall-Palmer This piece follows from two previous postings to this blog by Robert Lundie Smith on the Nokia/HTC/IPCom FRAND litigation before the High Court of England and Wales (here and here). This latest update, for which Robert is joined by colleague Carissa Kendall-Palmer, explains how the joint trial of FRAND issues in the…
In my earlier posts (here and here) I reported and commented on the first two phases of the Italian Pfizer antitrust case, in which the Italian Antitrust Authority (IAA) accused Pfizer of having abused of a dominant position by judicially enforcing patent rights against generic latanoprost in the Italian Courts. A small but potentially meaningful…
It could be argued that 2013 is proving to be somewhat unkind to UK patentees when it comes to the issues of sufficiency and priority. On 25 June 2013, in a typically comprehensive judgment running to some 90 pages, Arnold J held that Janssen’s patent was invalid for insufficiency. The relevant facts were as follows:…
