Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Novelty, Sufficiency of disclosure, United Kingdom

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The High Court dismissed Novartis’ claim for infringement of its EP(UK) patent for ophthalmically compatible extended wear contact lenses. Although Novartis established that the defendants’ product falls within certain claims of the patent, and successfully resisted Johnson & Johnson’s novelty and obviousness attacks, the patent was found invalid for insufficiency. The Court held it would…

Case Law, Novelty, Sufficiency of disclosure, United Kingdom

(Bristows)/

The High Court dismissed Novartis’ claim for infringement of its EP(UK) patent for ophthalmically compatible extended wear contact lenses. Although Novartis established that the defendants’ product falls within certain claims of the patent, and successfully resisted Johnson &Johnson’s novelty and obviousness attacks, the patent was found invalid for insufficiency. The Court held it would involve…

(Indirect) infringement, Case Law, Enforcement, Injunction, Netherlands, Validity

(Brinkhof)/

This is the first case in the Netherlands in which a patentee, whose patent was nullified in first instance in proceedings on the merits, requested a prohibition of infringement of this patent in preliminary injunction proceedings pending appeal of the first instance merits decision. The Preliminary Injunction Judge of the Court dismissed the request as…

Belgium, Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Validity

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The Brussels Court of Appeal ruled that, in calculating the period of validity of an SPC, the ‘first authorisation to place the product on the market in the Community’, within the meaning of Article 13 of the SPC Regulation, does not necessarily need to be an authorisation issued in accordance with Directive 65/55/EEC or Directive…

Case Law, EPC, Opposition, Procedure, Revocation

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In the case at hand, Olympus filed a petition for review against the decision of the Board of Appeal to revoke Olympus’ patent. Olympus argued that it had had no opportunity to comment on the grounds for this decision as it had never received the statement of the grounds of appeal and the invitation to…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Damages, Germany, Validity

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The District Court Düsseldorf clarified its case law regarding the requirement of a complete translation of patents into the German language and how to deal with errors in such translations. Besides, the Court held that the patent is to be considered valid as long as there is no binding decision on its invalidity. Hence, a…

Case Law, Chemical Engineering, Extent of Protection, Netherlands, Scope of protection

(Brinkhof)/

The Administrative Law Division of the Council of State holds that the District Court has rightfully found that the Patent Office was not obligated to issue a Supplementary Protection Certificate for the medicinal product cetuximab. Article 73 (1) of the Dutch Patents Act 1995 on indirect infringement, does not in all circumstances protect the patentee…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Validity

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This case concerns a referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeal regarding the interpretation of the term ‘pending application’ in the wording of Rule 25(1) EPC 1973. In the appealed decision from the receiving section, the receiving section held that from the date of the refusal by an examining division an application was no longer…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, Inventive step, Revocation, United Kingdom, Validity

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The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s finding that Aerotel’s Patent relating to a method of making pre-paid landline telephone calls was invalid for want of inventive step over the principal prior art (the WATS system). Having made this finding it was unnecessary to consider Aerotel’s other grounds of appeal.Further, Aerotel’s arguments of commercial…

Case Law, Electrical Engineering, EPC, Inventive step, Public prior use

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During appeal proceedings, the appellant argued lack of inventive step on the basis of public prior use of a composition for making the claimed product. The prior use appeared to relate to an ordinary commercial transaction. The patentee argued that the offer, sale and delivery of the product were only for test purposes. The Board…