The plaintiff, Power Stow A/S (“Power Stow”), held a national patent for a ramp for transporting luggage onto aircrafts. During prosecution of the patent-in-suit, the Danish PTO had initially declined to grant the patent for lack of inventive step over a US patent. A revised patent application was subsequently accepted in February 1996. Later RASN…
Control question: remember what this was? You certainly knew the answer had you read Max’s post on Patent Law and Philosophy: this is not just an IBC (Intermediate Bulk Container) for acids and toxins; this is a modern embodi-ment of an ancient Greek paradoxon. Remember: “cage + bottle = IBC”. This much is clear enough,…
One of the first questions that arise when a patentee is considering embarking on patent litigation is “Where should I sue?”. The answer to this question depends on a variety of factors, such as the workload of the Courts, their experience in patent cases, the convenience of the patentee and, of course, the legal framework…
In this case the Court of Appeal of Lyon affirmed the first French judgement granting an interlocutory injunction to prevent imminent infringement of a patent. The President of the First Instance Court had not considered any argument relating to the validity of the patent, and decided that in summary proceedings, only the existence of the…
The German Federal Court of Justice has maintained Microsoft’s patent relating to alternative handling of short and long filenames. In the first instance, the Federal Patent Court considered the teaching of the patent not inventive over the Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol used for CD-ROMs. However, supported by a court expert the Federal Court of Justice…
I. Priority of Invention II. Proving Conception and Reduction to Practice III. Sample Laboratory Notebook IV. Instructions For Maintaining Laboratory Notebook V. Instructions for Maintaining Inventory of Laboratory Notebooks I. PRIORITY OF INVENTION In accordance the United States patent statute, only the “first inventor” of the claimed invention is entitled to a patent for that…
By decision no. 9291 of 19 April 2010, the Italian Supreme Court clarified that the sale of a single unit of the patented product is novelty destroying under Art. 46 of the Italian IP Code, which provides that an invention is new if it is not comprised in the state of art and that this…
The English Patents County Court is to appoint a new judge on the retirement of His Honour Judge Fysh QC in July of this year. The Patents County Court was originally established in 1990 under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. It was designed to offer an alternative forum from the High Court (including…
In its 3 March 2010 decision, the Cour d’Appel of Paris, Division 5, Chamber 1, reversing the decision of the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris on this question, held that the authorisation to carry out a saisie-contrefaçon may be requested and obtained even after expiry of the patent, since the saisie-contrefaçon is intended to collect evidence of infringing acts committed prior to the patent expiry. This decision relating to the French saisie-contrefaçon will certainly be of interest to practitioners of other Member States of the European Union since Article 7 of EC Directive 2004/48, which had to be implemented into national laws before 29 April 2006, requires the Member States of the European Union to introduce into their national law “measures for preserving evidence” using as models the French saisie-contrefaçon and the Anton Piller order. This decision which finds no contradiction in Article 7 of EC Directive 2004/48 and which is essentially based on the evidential nature of the saisie-contrefaçon , may therefore be extended to the “measures for preserving evidence” set up into the laws of the different Member States of the European Union.
In a court order of 11 May 2010, the President of the Court of First Instance of Brussels refused a plaintiff to have indirect access to confidential information in the possession of a court-appointed expert through foreign patent infringement proceedings. The court appointed expert had obtained this confidential information while executing a counterfeit seizure, authorized by the…
