On 30 July 2012, Commercial Court number 5 of Barcelona handed down an interesting decision that has brought again to the fore the legality of so-called “preparatory acts” (in particular, obtaining marketing authorisation and price). The facts of the case may be summarised as follows: Merck Sharpe & Dohme (“MSD”) owns a Supplementary Protection Certificate…
The Court of Justice ruled that claims against different companies located in different Member States marketing the same product regarding infringement of a a European patent in one jurisdiction were so closely connected that they may be decided jointly to prevent irreconcilable judgments in the sense of Art. 6(1) EC 44/2001. In the present circumstances,…
On August 16, 2012, just four weeks after it heard oral arguments, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its second decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. (the ACLU “gene patenting”/BRCAI case). Once again, all judges on the three-judge panel agree that the diagnostic method claims based on “comparing”…
The Polish Supreme Administrative Court invalidated a decision of the Polish Patent Office in which it refused to grant a patent for an invention related to digital electronics. The court held that the patentability requirements under Polish patent law, including the technical character of an invention, correspond to the patentability requirements specified in the European…
The Supreme Administrative Court stated that the patentability requirements used by the Polish Patent Office should be construed in compliance with the patentability requirements provided in the European Patent Convention (EPC), and held that the technical character of a computer implemented invention should be examined by applying a liberal interpretation of the patentability requirements adopted…
The District Court of Turin rejected Merck’s requests for a preliminary injunction, finding lack of inventive step of the claimed co-formulation of dorzolamid and timolol based on a prima facie assessment following the problem solution approach of the EPO Boards of Appeal. Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this…
The Supreme Court held that the patent claiming a device to be mounted on ovens used to industrially drain pasta was infringed by application of the doctrine of equivalence. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.KluwerIPCases.com
The Supreme Court revoked claims 1 to 4, and found claim 5 to be novel and inventive but not infringed, because the result of defendant’s machine was not obtained by the claimed means. The court sanctioned the appeal court’s decision that the doctrine of equivalence could not be applied. Click here for the full text of…
One of the recurrent topics in patent litigation in Spain is whether or not a Court can review the validity of a patent in the context of preliminary injunction proceedings. According to some Courts, life is too short in preliminary injunction proceedings. If the Court had to embark upon analysing the validity of the patent,…
In a 2-1 decision issued August 3, 2012 in Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the safe harbor provisions of 35 USC § 271(e)(1) can shield the defendants from liability for patent infringement arising out of their use of patented methods to satisfy…
