On 27 September 2012, a new consolidated version of the Draft Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (Document 14268/12) was (finally) published. The consolidated text includes some of the amendments agreed upon on 5 December 2011 as well as on the 29/30 June 2012 EU Council summit, and also presents further amendments and quite a…
In the wake of the UPC Agreement having been entered into under the Danish presidency, there was widespread euphoria about the many, potentially positive, aspects of Danish SME litigants being able to save substantial costs under the envisaged UPC regime. The Danish press abounded in positive reviews put forward by politicians and industry representatives alike,…
After widespread reform in late 2010 (previously reported here), the Patents County Court (the “PCC”) is increasingly becoming a court of choice in intellectual property matters in England and Wales, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (“SMEs”). Part of the revamp included introducing a cap on costs (provided by CPR rules 45.41 – 45.43). In…
The UK IPO has applied the decision of the CJEU in Brüstle on stem cells in a recent case that is likely to lead to more judicial comment on the patentability of stem cell inventions. In International Stem Cell Corporation*, the applicant appealed the Examiner’s rejection of two patents, relating to methods of producing human…
On September 16, 2012, inter partes review proceedings became available against U.S. patents and post-grant review proceedings became available against certain U.S. business method patents. In two weeks, seventeen petitions for inter partes review have been filed and eight petitions for post-grant review have been filed. This article takes a brief look at these new proceedings.
by Bernward Zollner The German law on indirect patent infringement is rather strict. Particular means which are being supplied to third parties relate to an essential element of the in-vention if they are mentioned in the patent claim. In a decision from May 2004 called “Flügelradzähler” the Bundesgerichtshof has stated that the mere exist-ence of…
The Court decided it has jurisdiction in preliminary proceedings in respect of the alleged unlawful act by a Dutch company, consisting of facilitating – as the holder of a marketing authorization – its Portuguese fellow subsidiary to infringe the Portuguese part of a European patent and corresponding SPC in Portugal, based on Article 31 EC…
The French Supreme Court specified the rules for the application of the doctrine of equivalence in the assessment of infringement of a process patent, holding that a patented process is considered to be infringed under the doctrine of equivalence when both means have the same function in order to obtain the same result as the…
The Board, exercising its power under Article 12(4) RPBA, decided not to admit the patent proprietor’s (appellant) main request in appeal, because he did not at all respond in substance to the opposition in first instance, but had merely stated to be interested in maintaining the patent as granted and that it would not reply…
Until recently, cases involving “Supplementary Protection Certificates” (so-called “SPCs”) were relatively rare in Spain. This is due to the fact that, as a consequence of the transitional provisions of article 21 of Regulation 1768/1992 (the “SPC Regulation), SPCs became available in Spain later than in other European Union member states. However, over the last few…
