As in some other jurisdictions, under Spanish law so-called “mini-inventions” may be protected by a utility model (called “petty” patents in some countries). The two main differences between a patent and a Spanish utility model are: (i) in the case of utility models, the state of the art includes everything “divulged” in Spain before the…
The number of patent infringement suits filed with the District Court of Düsseldorf remains constantly high. In addition to the two existing patent litigation chambers (chamber 4a presided by Dr. Crummenerl and chamber 4b presided by Ms Voss), the Court now installed a third 4c chamber. This new 4c chamber already started its work at…
Following the positive vote by the European Parliament on 10 December 2012 and the European Council of Minister’s adoption of the Regulation EU/1257/2012 on the Unitary Patent and the Regulation EU/1260/2012 on Translation Arrangements on 17 December 2012 and their publication in the OJ L 361 of 31 December 2012, the legislation process for the…
“It’s the same thing night on night / Who’s wrong baby who’s right / Another fight and I slam the door on / Another battle in our dirty little war / When I look at myself I don’t see the man I wanted to be / Somewhere along the line I slipped off the track…
An applicant for re-establishment of rights who fails to substantiate his request adequately in first-instance proceedings cannot normally remedy that failure by submitting additional evidence with the grounds for appeal. An appellant does not have an absolute right to introduce new evidence with the statement of ground of appeal. Click here for the full text of…
As Christmas is coming closer, the “where is the Christmas stand?”-question comes up again. This little piece of engineering only used once a year is not only subject matter of several patents but has kept the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf busy, too (docket No. I-2 U 84/03). Who could imagine that a Christmas stand…
The Supreme Court held that the relevant date of a patent’s enforceability, in case a Spanish translation is required for such enforceability, is the date of announcement of the grant of the patent by the EPO, rather than the date of actual filing of the Spanish translation at the Spanish Patent Office, or the publication…
In the assessment of inventive step, the question whether the prior art discloses a pointer for the skilled person to use the measures described therein, and to apply these to a known substance, could be relevant. It should be investigated whether the measures from the prior art gave rise to the expectation that the solution…
The Federal Court of Justice held that data can be a product directly obtained by a patented process and can therefore be protected. An important issue was whether patent rights were exhausted, if the patentee consented to market a video masterband and the infringer used this masterband to produce DVDs The court discussed whether there…
The Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) revoked a decision by the Technical Board of Appeal because it failed to decide on a request to admit an expert report (rule 104b EPC2000). The petition for review was admissible in spite of the fact that the appellant failed to raise an objection during oral proceedings before the…
