The German Supreme Court this year passed two major decisions on the requirements for invoking a right to prior use. In its Desmopressin decision (June 12, 2012, X ZR 131/09), the Supreme Court ruled that knowledge regarding technical effects is not required for a prior user to be in possession of an invention as long…
Since French Act No. 2007-1544 of 29 October 2007, which implemented Directive No. 2004/48/EC into French law, it is expressly stated in Article L. 615-1 of the French Intellectual Property Code (IPC) that “Any violation of the rights of the owner of a patent (…) shall constitute an infringement. An infringement shall imply the civil liability of the infringer”. The…
In a recent decision by the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court, the issue was whether a technical feature may consist in information attached to an object if such information increases the usability of the object. The case T-66-07, Svenco Papperssäcker AB v. Segezha Packaging A/S, Svenco had filed suit claiming infringement of its Danish patent…
In a recent decision the new Swiss Federal Patent Court confirmed that it adheres to the case law with regard of the wording of prayers for relief in Swiss patent proceedings. Unlike in other jurisdictions, plaintiffs in Swiss patent proceedings must be very careful if they just adopt the wording from their patent claims in…
On November 30, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in the “ACLU/Myriad” gene patenting case (Association for Molecular Pathology v. Genetics, Inc.), taking on the debate over the patent-eligibility of human genes. The Court will review the August 16, 2012 Federal Circuit decision that held for the second time that Myriad’s claims directed to isolated DNA…
Note on High Court, 27 November 2012, Actavis/Eli Lilly Introduction Last year the English Supreme Court in a copyright case held that there is no doubt that the modern trend is in favour of the enforcement of foreign IP rights and that there are no issues of policy which militate against it nor is there…
Recently approved “Balduzzi Decree” (Law No. 189/12 of 8 November 2012 (confirming Law Decree 158/12 of 13 September 2012 – a consolidated version of the Decree is available here) seems to have changed quite a lot in terms of the protection of pharmaceutical patents in Italy, making it totally Inconvenient for generics to launch at…
Liversidge v (1) Owen Mumford Limited (2) Abbott Laboratories Limited In April 2011, the claimant commenced patent infringement proceedings in the UK Patents County Court (“PCC”) against the defendants in respect of European Patent No. 2067496 entitled “Medical Injector”. The defendants denied infringement and counterclaimed invalidity. Background The claimant filed a patent application for a…
Miquel Montana’s preliminary comments on the decision of the English High Court in Actavis v Eli Lilly [27th November 2012] provide interesting food for thought. Since some readers may not be familiar with the facts of the case and the relevant procedural rules in the UK, I will attempt to provide an overview before providing…
On 27 November 2012, the Honourable Mr Justice Arnold surprised the European patent community with an unprecedented decision (Actavis Group HF and Eli Lilly & Company; Medis EHF and Eli Lilly & Company) where an English Court accepted jurisdiction to decide a declaratory non-infringement action relating to the UK, German, French, Italian and Spanish part…
