Amendments, EPC, France, Procedure

(Véron & Associés)/

By 24 similar decisions rendered on 14 April 2010, the Cour d’Appel of Paris held that new Article L. 614-7 of the French Intellectual Property Code, implementing the London Agreement, applies not only to European patents in respect of which the mention of grant had been published after 1 May 2008 but also to European patents in respect of which the mention of grant had been published before 1 May 2008. One of these decisions is here summarized.

United States of America

(Clifford Chance)/

One of the topics that have kept our Courts busy over the last few years relates to which test should be applied to judge “equivalence”. Whereas the U.S.’s “same function-same way-same result” test has been accepted in cases involving mechanical patents, it has been discarded in cases dealing with chemical patents. In its judgment of…

(Indirect) infringement, Extent of Protection, Italy

(Trevisan & Cuonzo)/

By decision of 9 June 2010, the Italian Supreme Court tackled the issue of patent exhaustion in a manner which may give rise to some debate. The case concerned a claim of infringement brought by Bavelloni, an Italian manufacturer of machines for glass processing, against competitor Bottero which had exhibited in a trade fair a…

EPC, European Union

(Bristows)/ /1 Comment

The Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) has been asked to consider whether the draft agreement for the proposed European Patent Litigation System is compatible with the European Union treaties. On 2 July 2010, Advocate General Kokott provided an opinion (which has only recently been made publicly available) advising the CJEU to find…

Case Law, Extent of Protection, United Kingdom

/

The Court of Appeal held that AGA’s patent was not infringed by Occlutech in a case of septal occlusion devices, which feature braided metal strands and have a collapsed configuration for delivery through a channel in a patient’s body.Occlutech’s devices, which feature strands that are welded at one end of the device were found to…

Case Law, France, Novelty, Validity

/

In this case, the Court of Appeal of Paris affirmed a judgement of the Court of First Instance of Paris holding that a product “may not acquire novelty simply because it is prepared in a purer form”. The Court decided that “the parameters that are not inherent to the chemical compound itself, but rather are…

Amendments, Case Law, Estonia, Opposition

(V.O.)/ /2 Comments

Questions submitted to the Enlarged Board. During opposition the Proprietor announced that it wanted a correction of the decision to grant from the examining division. The opposition division decided to stay proceedings and the Opponent appealed the decision to stay. The Board submitted questions to the Enlarged Board, asking (1) whether a request for correction…