Austria, Belgium, Extent of Protection, France, Germany, Norway, Scope of protection, SPC, United Kingdom

(Véron & Associés)/

As already explained in a previous post, the company governed by the laws of Switzerland, Novartis AG, is the holder of patent EP 0 443 983 entitled “Acyl compounds”, whose subject-matter is a group of antihypertensive compounds, including valsartan, pharmaceutical preparations containing them and processes for the preparation of these compounds. This patent, filed on 12 February 1991, was to…

Case Law, Injunction, Switzerland

(Homburger AV)/

If incorrect pre-litigation behavior of only one of the parties (in this case evasive and conflicting answers to warning letters of a patentee) leads to unnecessary litigation, the court costs and legal expenses of the counterparty have to be imposed entirely on the party that acted incorrectly. Click here for the full text of this case. A…

Added matter, Inventive step, Norway, Second Medical Use

(Wikborg Rein)/

The Court held that Pfizer’s Norwegian patent for use of sildenafil (a PDE 5 inhibitor) for treatment of erectile dysfunction was inventive. Although the court did not consider it inventive to test PDE V inhibitors for the treatment of erectile dysfunction as such, it   held that the skilled person in so testing was confronted with…

Bulgaria, Case Law, SPC

(Delchev & Partners)/

The Supreme Administrative Court –overruled  the Patent Office (PO) denying AstraZeneca’s application for a supplementary protection certificate (SPC), because the PO should have applied § 77(2) – instead of §79 – of the Transitional and Closing Provisions of the Act amending the Bulgarian Patents Act, which does not contains any requirements relating to the product’s…

Novelty, Procedure, Revocation, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

In a judgment handed down on 11 November 2011, the Spanish Supreme Court has rejected an appeal filed by four Spanish pharmaceutical companies against a judgment from the Court of Appeal of Barcelona (Section 15), which had rejected a revocation action filed against patent EP 409,281 (Calcium salt of Atorvastatin) owned by Warner-Lambert. Applying the…

(Indirect) infringement, Injunction, Italy, SPC

(Trevisan & Cuonzo)/

On 11 November 2011 the IP Chamber of the Court of Rome granted the motion for preliminary injunction requested by Novartis AG and Novartis Farma S.p.A. against Mylan S.p.A. on the basis of Novartis’ Italian valsartan and hydrochlorothiazide SPC, the active ingredients in Novartis’ Co-Diovan medicinal product (which is marketed in Italy as Co-Tareg). The…

(Cross-border) jurisdiction, Enforcement, European Union, Validity

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

The creation of a Unified Patent Litigation System seems to have a lot of political momentum these days, with one proposal following the other at fairly short intervals. This blog discusses the latest Council Presidency proposal of a draft agreement on a Unified Patent Court and draft Statute of 26 October 2011. While a lot of desirable progress has been made, the current draft agreement is still far from being ready for signature and requires both thorough consideration and amendment in several quite important aspects, not least as regards finances.

(Indirect) infringement, France, Procedure

(Véron & Associés)/

On 20 September 2011, in a patent infringement case, the French Cour de cassation issued an important decision in which, for the first time, it refers to and relies on “the principle according to which a person may not contradict themselves to the detriment of another person“, i.e. on the estoppel. With this decision, the French supreme…

Enforcement, European Union, Injunction

(Hoffmann Eitle)/

With this groundbreaking decision of the CJEU, the parties entitled to injunctive relief are provided with the opportunity to obtain not only an enforceable injunction, but if the injunction is violated, they can also ask the original court to impose disciplinary fines on the defendant in a simple, fast and cost-efficient manner and then enforce these fines in other EU member states, as a rule at the domicile of the defendant.