The Provincial Court of Barcelona dismissed an appeal filed against a judgment from the Commercial Court number 4 of Barcelona, which had concluded that the product claims of the patent in suit were valid and enforceable in Spain under Articles 27.1 and 70.7 of TRIPS. The main interest of the judgment lies in the fact…
The Federal Court of Justice held that a licensee’s failure to exploit an exclusive patent license can justify termination of the license agreement by the licensor, even if there is no breach of contract or default by the licensee. From an objective licensor’s perspective, however, there must be no prospect of an improvement in the…
The Federal Patent Court has decided that an inventive step according to Article 56 EPC is not established if the person skilled in the art has only to conduct routine exploratory analysis based on the prior art. Against this legal background the Federal Patent Court nullified the patent in suit arguing that in a situation…
When the transitional provisions for EPC 2000 are silent, the Board has to establish which legal text is applicable. In that case the Board has to take into account that it is undesirable to use both different versions of the EPC over a prolonged period of time and that there is no indication that the…
The Dutch Supreme Court stated that the patentee still has an interest in this supreme appeal proceeding after amendment of the patent pursuant to Articles 105a-c EPC 2000 subsequent to coming into force of EPC 2000 and the Appeals Court’s decision to nullify the patent. Although the Appeals Court in subsequent proceedings should take the…
The patent in suit contains claims for the (+)enantiomer of citalopram and a method for its resolution from the racemate (the diol method). The Defendants appealed a decision of the Court of Appeal arguing that the patent was insufficient because it effectively claimed the (+)enantiomer made by any method whereas the specification only disclosed two…
In this case the Court holds that documents and explanations relating to a patent application should be corrected or changed at the request of the Polish Patent Office within a fixed time period and under penalty of discontinuation of the proceedings. A faulty application and non-compliance with such requests may result in the refusal to…
Two research scientists, involved with the synthesis of a compound which formed the basis of a patented heart imaging agent, brought what is the first ever successful action under Section 40 of the Patents Act 1977, arguing that the patents are of outstanding benefit to their employer, and as such, they are entitled to a…
Lack of novelty by re-working prior art requires that the re-works must inevitably lead to results falling within the claim of the patent at issue. If choices have to be made for the re-working process, the result is not inevitable.A possible breach of Article 84 EPC (clarity) does not lead to nullity. The Court states…
Mr Yanko Tsv. A. filed an application with the Bulgarian Patent Office (BPO) for the grant of a patent for an ‘Active solar heating system’. The BPO dismissed the application as the Expert Department of ‘Mechanical Engineering, Construction, Electronics and Electronical Engineering’ determined that the invention applied for was not industrially applicable and therefore not…
