The UK and US governments have recently launched calls for views regarding their SEP and FRAND policies, in order to understand the opinions of all the stakeholders, such as patent owners, implementers, consumers, etc. In the US, the Department of Justice (DoJ), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the United States Patent…

Due to recent developments in Germany, Slovenia and Austria, where parliaments gave their support to the Protocol for Provisional Application of the Unified Patent Court Agreement, it is likely that after many years of delay the new Court will open its doors in 2022 and also the Unitary Patent will finally see the light of…

In recent years, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has invalidated or affirmed the invalidity of various biopharma patents under 35 U.S.C. § 112, which requires that a patent specification contain a written description of the invention and enable any person skilled in the art to make or use the invention. The court…

After four years of experience with Spanish Act 24/2015, of 24 July, on Patents (the “new Patent Act”), which came into force on 1 April 2017, the time seems ripe now to update some aspects of the Act that could be further improved. In this vein, earlier this year the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office…

Although a silent technological revolution is currently taking place in the tobacco industry, there is no publicly available data on patents that read on tobacco harm-reduction technologies. We recently conducted a patent analysis and found that, in the developing world, there are only few patents filed relating to tobacco harm reduction. This stands in stark…

Austria will most likely become the member state which will trigger the start of the preparatory phase of the Unitary Patent project. Last Friday the National Council, one of the chambers of its parliament, unanimously approved draft legislation enabling Austria to ratify Protocol for Provisional Application (PPA) of the Unified Patent Court Agreement. Ratification of…