by Katie Hutchinson & Brian Cordery A recent judgment from Mr Justice Roth in the UK Patents Court found a patent for a fire resistant LED downlight valid and infringed. The gist of the invention was said to be a simple change from the state of the art but it was held that just because…
The USPTO has issued new Guidance For Determining Subject Matter Eligibility to help examiners apply the principles of Myriad and Prometheus to any claim “reciting or involving laws of nature/natural principles, natural phenomena, and/or natural products.” The guidelines focus on a “signficantly different” test, and include lists of factors that weigh towards and against patent eligibility. The guidelines also include several…
The use and circulation of a product which has been put on the market by the patentee or a third party acting with the consent of the patentee (e.g. a licensee) cannot be prohibited by the patentee anymore. This concept of exhaustion is not only applicable to the territory of Germany, but to the entire…
The EPO Board of Appeal 3.2.06 decided on 20 February 2014 to refer the following question to the Enlarged Board of Appeal:
“Is an appeal inadmissible or not deemed to have been filed, if both the notice of appeal had been filed and the fee for appeal had been paid after the expiry of the appeal term pursuant to Art. 108, 1st sentence EPC?”
UPC aficionados will be interested to learn that the 16th draft of the Rules of Procedure was unveiled yesterday. Readers will remember that the previous draft was published on 31 May 2013. Since then, the Drafting Committee has been working on a new draft that may – or may not – accommodate the comments received…
In our previous blog Opting out and Opting in we discussed some of the questions regarding the transitional regime under the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA). Due to its importance and ambiguity this provision continues to be a source of considerable controversy, so much so that the Preparatory Committee, which is tasked with preparing the…
General disadvantages of fixed-dose combinations cannot reduce the reasonable expectation of success derivable from the prior art with respect to the formulation of a pharmaceutical composition containing two specific active pharmaceutical ingredients. A synergistic effect is not suitable to establish inventive step of a fixed-dose combination of two active pharmaceutical ingredients, where the synergistic effect…
1. Also in case a dependent claim is patentable on its own, fulfillment of all features of both the main claim and the dependent claim is required for infringement. 2. The scope of a patent is defined by its claims; the prosecution file may only be considered for interpretation if there are contradictions between the…
The Court of Appeal Düsseldorf held that the offering of certain products by the defendants was not covered by the scope of the patent due to the specific “Swiss type” wording, which does not grant an absolute product protection, and due to the fact that the advertising of the defendants did not address the patented…
Eugen Seitz AG v KHS Corpoplast GmbH and Norgren AG [2014] EWHC 14 (Ch) is an interesting case relating to the valves in stretch blow moulding machines used to make plastic bottles. The patent was alleged to be invalid for both lack of novelty and obviousness, although the Defendants denied that the relevant prior art…
