Exceptions to patentability, United States of America

(Foley&Lardner LLP)/

In a divided en banc decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s holding that the claims at issue in CLS Bank v. Alice Corporation are invalid under the “abstract idea” exception to 35 USC § 101. While a majority of the judges agreed that the method and computer-readable medium claims are invalid, they disagreed as to why. Further, the court was evenly split as to whether the systems claims are invalid. (With no majority agreement on that issue, the district court decision is affirmed). Even if this case makes its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, patent-eligibility will remain a murky area of U.S. patent law for the foreseeable future.

(Cross-border) jurisdiction, (Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Enforcement, Injunction, Inventive step, Netherlands

(Brinkhof)/

The PI judge in the District Court of The Hague held that under certain circumstances, provisional cross-border jurisdiction can be derived from art. 31 Regulation (EC) 44/2001, which would require a “real connecting link” between the sought measures and the jurisdiction of a contracting state (ECJ C-391/95, Van Uden/Decoline). However, in the present case there…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Equivalents, Extent of Protection, Netherlands

(Brinkhof)/

The PI judge in the District Court of The Hague held that the processes used to manufacture the generic products in dispute did not fall within the invoked patents’ scope of protection, and particularly that these did not comprise equivalent measures, because the allegedly equivalent substances had significantly different chemical compositions and functionality. Finding the…

Case Law, Damages, Enforcement, Netherlands, Procedure, Revocation

(Brinkhof)/

The Court of Appeal held that the duty to compensate the successful party’s legal costs in intellectual property proceedings, pursuant to Art. 14 of the Enforcement directive, also applies to invalidity claims, counterclaims and defenses by the alleged infringing party threatened with patent enforcement. To deny such compensation in respect of nullity claims or defenses…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Extension of subject matter, Procedure

(V.O.)/

The Board of Appeal ruled that color figures contained in the application when filed could be used as a basis for amendments. The board had to deal with the problem that no original copy of the color figures was available to the board. Therefore, the board considered it appropriate to compare sets of copies of…

Biologics, Case Law, EPC, Inventive step

(Vereenigde)/

In order to determine whether the features that distinguish the patent claims over the prior art can be considered when assessing inventive ste p and novelty, the Board must consider whether these features make a technical contribution to the invention. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this case will be…