(Indirect) infringement, EPC, European Union, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

In Grimme Landmaschinenfabrik GmbH v Scott [2010] EWCA Civ 1110 the English Court of Appeal stated clearly its support for judicial collaboration facilitating de facto harmonisation of patent law in Europe. The Court then interpreted the UK provisions on indirect/contributory infringement consistently with approaches taken in The Netherlands and Germany. The case in question concerned…

Procedure, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/ /1 Comment

One of the strategies used by manufacturers of generic drugs to try to capture the market of the “reference product” when the patent protecting the latter expires is to present the generic as a cheap alternative to the “reference product”. This raises several interesting questions, such as whether or not a generics company, for the…

(Compulsory) license, Case Law, Damages, Greece

(Drakopoulos Law Firm)/

The question at issue was whether a verbal preparatory agreement between the parties on a patented invention had given rise to a valid license agreement and ensuing entitlement to damages. The Supreme Court affirmed an earlier Court of Appeals decision, for the most part, by finding that a (patent) license agreement must be in written…

Case Law, Enforcement, Extent of Protection, Germany

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The court held that the plaintiff who is listed as proprietor of the patent in the patent register is allowed to claim both injunctive relief and damages as well as claims to rendering accounts and provision of information to prepare the damage claim for all infringing acts committed during the time of his/her enlistment, despite…

Case Law, Denmark, Novelty, Public prior use, Revocation

(Bugge Valentin)/

The Appellant had obtained both utility model and patent protection for a mechanical invention. The Defendant argued that the subject matter of both rights did not fulfil the novelty requirement, because it had been disclosed to the public by demonstrations of the invention to both individual persons and corporate entities prior to the priority date….

Bulgaria, Case Law

(Delchev & Partners)/

Atanas filed a patent application for a ‘Gravity Power System’. The Bulgarian Patent Office (BPO) dismissed the application because the claimed invention was not industrially applicable and therefore not patentable as the system’s principle of functioning was contrary to the law of energy conservation, i.e. the system would always need an external force in order…

Enforcement, Extent of Protection, Italy, Procedure, SPC

(Trevisan & Cuonzo)/ /1 Comment

The Italian Antitrust Authority (Autorità Garante della concorrenza e del mercato) announced on 26 October that it commenced proceedings against Pfizer following a complaint filed by Ratiopharm alleging that Pfizer’s behaviour in the enforcement of its patent rights amounts to abuse of a dominant position. It is too soon to make comments on this case….

(Cross-border) jurisdiction, Denmark, Enforcement, Injunction

(Bugge Valentin)/

In Denmark, as is probably the case in many other jurisdictions, in IP proceedings a case must be brought against each alleged infringer in that alleged infringer’s local jurisdiction (bailiff’s department of the local city court). In a recent decision from the Danish High Court (Eastern Division) (case reported in the Danish Legal Gazette UfR…

Damages, Injunction, Procedure, Spain

(Clifford Chance)/

Like other countries, such as Australia or Germany, a “petty” patent or “utility model” can be obtained in Spain for so-called minor inventions. They present a twofold distinction with regard to “full-fledged” patents, when it comes to examining their patentability: (i) only documents disclosed in Spain form part of the state of the art; (ii)…