In a recent decision by the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court (reported in the Danish Legal Gazette as U2011.2745S), the court ruled on the issue of restitution subsequent to default in making timely payment of a renewal fee. A US company, acting thorugh local patent counsel, failed to pay its 5 year renewal fee on…
This long awaited ECJ decision concerns the interpretation of the term “embryo” in the Biotech Directive (98/44/EC). According to the Court Art. 6 (2c) of the Directive excludes the patentability of use of human embryos for commercial or industrial purposes, and only use for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes which is applied to the embryo for…
The Court of Appeal dismissed Krka’s appeal against a decision of the Oslo Court of Enforcement and Execution, which granted AstraZeneca a preliminary injunction preventing Krka from marketing its generic esomeprazole product in Norway. The Court of Appeal held that the esomeprazole salt in Krka’s generic product with an optical purity of 98,8-99,4% was “an…
Can a valid European patent be declared invalid in Poland? In other words, can a computer-implemented invention for which a European patent has already been granted be refused a patent by the Polish Patent Office? While this may sound contradictory, it is in fact common practice – not only in the Polish Patent Office but…
The requisite of “imminence” introduced by Directive 2004/48/EC, coupled with the measures approved by the Ministry of Health to speed-up the administrative steps necessary to launch generics, has placed owners of patents that protect chemical and/or pharmaceutical products at a crossroads: if they file an application for a preliminary injunction before the generic medicament has…
In a recently published decision the Swiss Federal Supreme Court clarified some particularities of the former Swiss Patent Act regarding the amendment of patent claims during prosecution proceedings. Under the Swiss Patent Act in force until 1 July 2008, applicants who applied for the grant of a Swiss patent were allowed to extend the scope…
According to the decision “Diglycidverbindung”, if the variant does neither fall under the literal scope of the claim nor corresponds to a (non-claimed) example in the description, infringement by equivalent means still seems to be possible under certain circumstances.
by Miriam Büttner In a recent decision of 15 September 2011 (ref. no. 4b O 99/11) the District Court of Düsseldorf (LG Düsseldorf) found that a non-final decision of the utility model cancel-lation division of the German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO), with which the utility model was declared (partially) invalid, is not a sufficient…
On 24 November 2011 the CJEU passed judgment in the cases C-322/10 (Medeva) and C-422/10 (Georgetown). In the Medeva judgment, the Court answers six questions put to it by the UK Court of Appeal and the High Court respectively. The facts are deemed known by the reader – they can be conveniently reduced to: A…
In its judgement of 18 October 2011, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has confirmed that human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) do not constitute patentable subject matter, given the ban under European law on patents for technologies entailing the uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes. The patent which gave…
