According to article 1 of the European Patent Convention (EPC), “a system of law, common to Contracting States for the grant of patents for inventions is established by this Convention.” So, at first glance, it would appear that the European Patent Organisation was meant to be an International Institution governed by the rule of law….
I have already mentioned on many occasions on this blog the difficulties that FRANDs were causing regarding the choice of jurisdiction and the increasingly favorable position of French Courts to SEPs holders. The two decisions rendered by the Paris High Court in the XIAOMI vs. PHILIPS case confirm this trend by holding that the Paris…
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…
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…
