The Unified Patent Court has published an update on the problems with the CMS and the opting out of patents of the jurisdiction of the court before the starting date of 1 June 2023. On its website, the UPC writes: ‘Dear users of the UPC Case Management System, As you may have experienced, the CMS…
The Unified Patent Court has formally announced that, for the time being, competencies which were originally assigned to the London seat of the UPC central division, will be divided between Munich and Paris. Remarkably, there is no mention of Milan as third seat of the central division. Only two months ago, a spokesperson for the…
On January 26, 2023, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., who sought to invalidate Amgen Inc.’s Japanese patent (JP5705288) covering an isolated monoclonal antibody used as cholesterol medication, won an appeal case in the IP High Court (Case No. 2021 (Gyo-ke) 10093). What was surprising in this case was that the IP High Court’s invalidity conclusion was the…
Less than three weeks before the planned opening of the Unified Patent Court, a message has been published on its website as a reaction to problems with the content management system, which apparently isn’t able to cope with the growing inflow of opt-outs. Proprietors who don’t want their patents to fall under the UPC need…
On 4 May 2023, a mere two weeks after the conclusion of the hearing, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in Sandoz and Teva v BMS. The appeal decision is centred on the question of plausibility and comes hot on the heels of the Enlarged Board of Appeal’s decision in G 2/21. Indeed,…
Around 200 judges, patent litigators, patent attorneys, other patent experts, representatives of scientific institutions and companies, government officials, The Hague mayor Jan van Zanen and Dutch minister of Economic Affairs and Climate, Micky Adriaansens, attended the opening ceremony of the Dutch local division of the Unified Patent Court today in The Hague. Minister Adriaansens stressed…
‘The patent community lives today after many dark years in the sunrise period in which owners of patents have to decide if after June 1st, they want to be on the sunny beaches of the UPC or prefer to live another 7 or 14 years in the dark forests of national patent litigation.’ Those were…
From the company name of an appellant alone it can generally not be derived that the appellant does not meet the conditions of Rule 6(4,5) EPC for payment of the reduced appeal fee. This applies even where a company name is well-known. Where it is not clear from the file at the end of the…
In an earlier post I explained the issues that the proposed EU Regulation on SEPs intends to address, and why neither the market nor the courts solve them. Here, I discuss three points of critique brought against the Proposal: that it would reduce innovation incentives; that a family-level essentiality assessment would be too imprecise; and…
The Unified Patent Court has announced that starting 29 May 2023 external users will be able to practice entry into force (EIF) functionalities on a dedicated CMS platform. The environment will be the same as the current sunrise practice CERUS, on which the EIF functionalities will be activated. There is no end date for the…
