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…
The entry into force of the EPC 2000 on 13 December 2007 presented, for the first time in Spain, the possibility of amending claims in legal proceedings followed before national Courts where the validity of the patent has been questioned. This has sparked debate as to whether the application of article 138 will require the…
By Legislative Decree no. 28 of 4 March 2010, the Italian legislator introduced obligatory mediation into the Italian legal system. In particular, Art. 5 provides that, as of 20 March 2011, in a number of listed cases, court proceedings may be instigated only if, prior to that, the parties pursued mediation proceedings using one of…
There have not been many decisions in 2010 from the English Patents Court that are likely to be regarded in future decades as seminal judgments. However, in the author’s view, the judgment of the Court of Appeal of 28 July 2010 in Schlumberger Holdings Limited v Electromagnetic Geoservices AS is likely to be cited frequently…
What happens when the same invention is covered by a French national patent and a European patent claiming the priority of the French application and when the European patent lapses after having replaced the French national patent?
The patentee has no patent at all!
That is the bitter lesson of the 2 July 2010 decision of the Cour d’Appel of Paris.
The holder of a patent is entitled to damages caused by unlawful usage of the patent’s teaching. But what to do if the patent is transferred while the patent is being infringed? Who can claim damages for whose damage then? In principle, the transfer of the patent is not subject to the registration of the…
One of the most contentious points discussed before Spanish Courts over the last few years is the question of whether or not Courts should examine the validity of the patent when this has been raised as a defence in the context of preliminary injunction proceedings. On 17 June 2010, the Court of Appeal of Barcelona…
The Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris in its 28 May 2010 decision, Institut Pasteur v Société Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, illustrates the specificity of the French doctrine of equivalents, rejecting the “file wrapper estoppel” theory as it is known in the US. However, since it applies the doctrine of equivalents although the function of the claimed means is not novel, this decision does not seem to be in line with the majority of decisions rendered on that item.
The Supreme Court of the United States issued an opinion on appeal (as Bilski v. Kappos) that affirmed the judgment of the CAFC of affirming the rejection of the patent, but revised many aspects of the CAFC’s decision. In their decision, handed down on June 28, 2010, the Supreme Court rejected the machine-or-transformation test as…
By a decision of 20 May 2009, the Italian Supreme Court clarified the limits of the so called pharmacy exception contemplated by Italian patent law, according to which the extemporaneous preparation by the pharmacist of units of a drug, based on a medical prescription, using a patented active substance, does not result in patent infringement….
