(Compulsory) license, European Union, Germany

(Rospatt Osten Pross)/

by Hetti Hilge The District Court Duesseldorf stayed a case between Huawei and ZTE concerning mobile and base stations within the LTE standard and referred five question to the CJEU (docket No. 4b O 104/12). The court wants to clarify under what circumstances an infringement court has to consider a compulsory license defense in a…

(Compulsory) license, European Union, Germany

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

The Regional Court Dusseldorf submitted on 21 March 2013 a referral to the CJEU with five questions regarding the interpretation of Art. 102 TFEU relating to the antitrust objection of compulsory license in patent infringement actions. The patent infringement action at issue is concerned with a LTE-standard-essential patent. The plaintiff declared its readiness via the…

Case Law, France, Procedure

(Pinsent Masons)/

The Paris Court of Appeal clarified the interest of a potential competitor to seek the revocation of a patent. It was particularly unclear whether any competitor, current or potential, could have a legitimate interest in the form of a “clear the path” approach. However, in this case the Court held that Omnipharm had no legitimate…

Case Law, Enforcement, Procedure, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

Spain adopted the optional clause in Article 65 of the EPC, which requires a translation of the patent filed with the national patent office within 3 months of publication of the patent by EPO. The Supreme Court decided that this term starts on the date of publication of the announcement of the granting of the…

Added matter, Case Law, Inventive step, Mechanical Engineering, United Kingdom, Validity

(Bristows)/

The Court held that a decision by the EPO relating to the UK designation was not capable of challenge. In any event, the procedure chosen by the claimant to challenge the decision (an application to correct the UKIPO register based on Rule 50 of the Patents Rules 2007) was wrong, because it required the consent…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Germany, Novelty

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

A composition obtainable on the market is at least not then novel if the composition can be analyzed and reproduced by a skilled person without undue burden. For this purpose, it is sufficient for a complex com¬po-sition that is not easily identifiable, if the skilled person can establish a manageable number of hypotheses on the…

Biologics, Case Law, SPC, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The High Court (Arnold J.) decided to refer further questions on the interpretation of Article 3 of the SPC Regulation to the CJEU,, particularly in relation to the Article 3(a) requirement that “the product is protected by a basic patent in force”, suggesting an interpretation which focuses on the “inventive concept” of the patent rather…

Biologics, Case Law, Inventive step, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The Court of Appeal held that while structural approaches for determining obviousness (with reference to the Pozzoli test), are useful, the importance of the statutory test cannot be undermined. The ultimate question that the Court must address is whether it was obvious to the skilled but unimaginative addressee to make a product or carry out…

(Indirect) infringement, Belgium, Case Law, Damages, Extent of Protection, Mechanical Engineering, Procedure

(Cappuyns Intellectual Property Law )/

The Court of Appeal of Liège confirmed the President of the Commercial Court’s finding that the appellant had committed patent infringement, and ordered the reimbursement of costs of the saisie-contrefaçon (seizure of evidence), which were not considered damages but as procedural costs. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this case…