The Enlarged Board of Appeal has now issued its long-awaited full decision in case G 1/21. Readers can access it here. The decision deserves a few comments. The Enlarged Board’s advance publication of the order of the decision in July was viewed by many as a sort of cliffhanger. This was because the question answered…
Even though the United Kingdom is expressly mentioned in the Protocol for Provisional Application (PPA) of the Unified Patent Court Agreement as one of the states that has to give its support to the PPA, this is not seen as a stumbling block for the entry into force of the Protocol by the member states…
A judgment of 7 July 2021 from the Spanish Supreme Court has been published, which, as discussed below, following the case law from the EPO’s Boards of Appeal, introduces certain guidelines for assessing whether or not an invention is sufficiently described. The background of the case can be summarized as follows: The complainant filed a…
In Japanese patent litigation, calling expert witnesses is very rare and the parties usually try to prove common technical knowledge (CGK) by submitting documentary evidence, such as publications available as of the priority date and written expert declarations. Thus, parties need to be aware that descriptions in the publications are crucial and cannot be supplemented…
This short post reports on one of the Panel Sessions at this year’s AIPPI Congress which took place virtually for the second year in a row. The tenth panel session of the AIPPI Online World Congress 2021 addressed global FRAND determinations by national courts and out-of-jurisdiction judgments in the form of anti-suit and anti-anti-suit injunctions….
On 8 October 2021, His Honour Judge Hacon (sitting as a Judge of the High Court) handed down his decision in an action brought by Royalty Pharma Collection Trust (“Royalty Pharma”) for approximately €23 million in royalty payments from Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (“Boehringer”) (Royalty Pharma Collection Trust v Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH [2021] EWHC 2692 (Pat))….
Slovenia has deposited its instrument of ratification for the Protocol on the Provisional Application of Unified Patent Court Agreement and the UPCA itself. According to a message of the UPC Preparatory Committee, this brings “the Unified Patent Court one step closer to its launch”. “Thanks to the Slovenian ratification and following the recent ratification of the…
The Wako federal district court abused its discretion in fining that The Western District of Texas was a more convenient form that the Northern District of California. The federal district court in Waco, Texas abused its discretion in denying Juniper Networks’ motion to transfer six patent infringement actions filed by a Texas-based patent assertion entity…
In a new chapter of the ongoing saga of Sisvel’s 4G patents against (mainly Chinese) infringers, the present interlocutory decision shows that the procedural attitude of a defendant (in the present case Wiko) may be very important and can influence the court’s decision. Case date: 21 April 2021 Case number: C/09/583227 / HA ZA 19-1162 Court: District…
In a recent decision, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court – Switzerland’s highest court also in patent matters – dealt with the question of whether the assessment of patent claims is fundamentally a question of law or a question of fact. This distinction is relevant under Swiss law for example because in Switzerland, after the conclusion…
