The Unified Patent Jurisdiction is coming! It is announced that the system will be operational by 2022. Great! But no information on its implementation, European governments seem to be barely aware of it, ignoring the issue (not really “European” by the way)… What is the problem? Example 1: who are the candidate judges? No public…
Breaking News: The President of the Boards of Appeal and the President of the Office jointly propose to the Administrative Council to re-locate the Boards of Appeal from Haar to the building Pschorr-Höfe 7 in Munich, owned by the EPO, as of 2025/2026. While this pretty spectacular U-turn still has to be confirmed by the…
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…
The Federal Court of Justice has dealt with the important question of how the amount in dispute in patent nullity proceedings is to be determined with regard to a standard-essential patent. In principle, the amount in dispute is to be determined in the same way as for a “normal” patent. The Federal Court of Justice…
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…
On September 30th, 2021, the Danish High Court (Eastern Division) rendered its decision in a long running patent infringement case. One important element of the case was the question of acquiescence, in particular, whether the patent pro-prietor is required to act on a possible patent infringement (and commence legal proceedings) when opposition proceedings are pending….
1. The established approach of applying the due-care criterion to the question of removal of the cause of non-compliance under Rule 136 EPC leads to an additional admissibility requirement, by expanding the scope of the substantive due-care criterion, which has no basis in the EPC. 2. Removal of the cause of non-compliance is a question…
