The Court of Appeal has overturned a decision of the High Court in finding Virgin’s patent for an aircraft seating system to be valid and infringed. The Court of Appeal’s judgment is of particular interest as it concerns the skilled person and general principles of claim construction. According to the Court of Appeal, the skilled…
In case of parallel proceedings before a national court and the Boards of Appeal, parties should inform both tribunals of this position as early as possible. In order to avoid duplication of proceedings, the parties should ask the appropriate tribunal for acceleration. Whether acceleration is requested by one party, or both or all parties in…
The Antwerp Commercial Court dismissed Merck’s claim for injunctive relief against Teva, ruling that Teva’s montelukast-based generic medicines do not infringe Merck’s European patent (EP 0 737 186) with respect to an improved process for preparation of the active ingredient montelukast, either literally or by equivalents. A full summary of this case has been published…
The Commercial Court Number 4 of Barcelona found that although obtaining the price for generic versions of Calcium Atorvastatin by two Spanish companies from the Ministry of Health is not an act of infringement as such, the acts carried out by the defendants constituted a threat of infringement that justified a prohibition to enter the…
In view of the need for a consistent approach to interpretation of Council Regulation (EEC) 1768/92, the Court of Appeal has referred to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) questions on the meaning of the term ‘the first authorisation to place the product on the market’ in Article 13(1); in particular whether the first authorisation…
In this patent case the Supreme Court of the Netherlands referred two prejudicial questions to the European Court of Justice. The first question relates to the interpretation of Article 1 of the Brussels I Regulation. The second question is whether Article 14 of the Enforcement Directive is applicable on a procedure on the recognition and…
In this judgment the Barcelona Court of Appeal concluded that any ‘preparatory acts’ (for example, submitting samples) conducted prior to the introduction in Spain of the ‘Bolar Clause’, as required by Directive 2004/27, would have been already excluded from the realm of patent infringement by the Experimental Use Exception. The Court rejected a request to…
This decision of the Board of Appeal covers two questions of interest: 1) May an Opposition Division include an obiter dictum in its decision? (The answer in this case is yes.) 2) To what extent is amendment in the background section of the description allowed in a divisional application? A full summary of this case…
The District Court of The Hague finds that the generic products of the defendants fall under the scope of protection of both of Mundipharma’s patents, which are related to controlled release oxycodone formulations. According to the District Court, the scope of protection of the patents is not limited to products wherein all oxycodone is within…
The appellant in this case filed a statement of grounds against the decision of the examining division to refuse a patent application. For the main request this statement only stated that it was believed that the application met the requirements of the European Patent Convention and maintained the arguments presented in the examination procedure. For…
