The judgment of 17 October 2022 recently handed down by the Patents Section of Barcelona Commercial Court of First Instance no. 4 is most interesting, for a variety of reasons. First, because the hearing of the case lasted for five days (2-5 May and 15 June), a length which is rather unusual in Spanish patent…
Video conferences will become the default format of oral opposition proceedings in at the European Patent Office as of 2023. Only under certain circumstances, and when the opposition division permits it, will oral proceedings in opposition be conducted in person. A decision to that effect was announced yesterday, a week after the publication of the final…
The European Patent Office and the Unified Patent Court (UPC) have signed an agreement on the exchange of data between the two institutions. The agreement, which was signed by EPO President António Campinos and President of the UPC’s Court of Appeal Klaus Grabinksi on the fringes of a high-level conference last week in Brussels, provides…
Article 124, III of the so-called “PACTE” Law enshrines the disappearance of the statute of limitations for revocation actions concerning industrial property titles. It was intended to put an end to the previous case law, which was thus disproved, applying the five-year limitation period of Article 2224 of the Civil Code to these actions, notably…
Historically, China promulgated its first patent law in the 1980s, the result of its reopening and affiliation to the WIPO, which led to the country’s joining important multilateral agreements, such as the Paris Union Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1984) and the TRIPS Agreement (2001). This patent law entered into force in 1985…
The Unified Patent Court will lead to a concentration of forces in the European patent litigation sector. That is the expectation of Richard Ebbink, partner at Brinkhof, and Georg Rauh, partner at Vossius. In September, their firms announced they would start cooperating in a new brand, Vossius and Brinkhof UPC Litigators. Kluwer IP Law interviewed…
The preparations for the start of the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court have gained momentum. In the upcoming week a high-profile conference on the UP system will be held in Brussels and a mock UPC trial in Paris. The conference, jointly organised by the Belgian government, the EPO and the European Commission, will…
Innovation in healthcare of all types is on the rise in Brazil. As this article will show, large investments have been made and are continuing to be made across all parts of the sector. With continuing investment, it is more important than ever that all those involved give active consideration to intellectual property rights and…
Six months after ILOAT judgment No. 4551, ruling that measures restricting mass emails at the European Patent Office were contrary to the freedom of communication and must be set aside, the EPO management has failed to execute the judgment and has tried to restrict mass emails in other ways. The Central Staff Committee (CSC) of…
The claimed methods of filtering, highlighting, and selecting portions of maps or other visual information for display had long been done by hand, and the claims failed to describe specific technological improvements making them patent-eligible. Two IBM software patents related to graphical display technology were invalid for claiming ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. §…
