The transposition of the “trade secrets” directive in France allowed the introduction of new legal tools that apply to ex parte investigation measures and infringement seizures (“saisie-contrefaçon”). We propose here a panorama of the first decisions in this area. When it transposed the so-called “Trade Secrets” Directive (EU) 2016/943 of 8 June 2016, French Law…
Times where a lot is written about matters of constitutional law are not necessarily good times. When the wheels of a state or state-like organization engage smoothly with each other and when separation of powers, rule of law and checks and balances are considered as self-evident and given, there is no particular need to spend…
While the EPO published a report late September about the importance of intellectual property rights for the European economy, internally meetings were held by EPO president António Campinos both with the Central Staff Committee and representatives of trade union SUEPO to normalize relations between staff and management. Campinos announced several encouraging measures. Still, there is…
The European Patent Office has today published an advance preview of its annual update to the Guidelines for Examination which will come into force on 1 November 2019. This year, there have been some tweaks to sections on how novelty, inventive step and clarity are assessed. The updates also add detail to discussions on formalities…
In most legal systems, preliminary injunctions in patent matters require the applicant to show that he would suffer an irreparable disadvantage without the approval of the requested preliminary injunction. In the different legal systems, there are different standards and requirements for the proof of irreparable harm. While some jurisdictions require a completely irreparable disadvantage, others…
By Thomas Becher, German and European Patent Attorney, Hoffmann Eitle From a first read, Decision T 1731/12 may have a tremendous impact on the patenting of medical devices at the European patent office. The EPO itself seems to attach quite some importance to the decision because it has provided an official headnote which serves to summarize…
The Board properly found that a person skilled in the art would not be motivated to combine two prior art references and that industry praise supported a finding of nonbviousness. Substantial evidence supported the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s determination following inter partes review that a patent owned by Frymaster LLC for measuring cooking oil…
A claim defining a compound as having a certain purity would lack novelty over a prior art disclosure describing the same compound only if the prior art disclosed the claimed purity at least implicitly, for example by way of a method for preparing said compound, the method inevitably resulting in the claimed purity. Such a…
As per Article 154 of the Turkish IP Law any person who has a legal interest can file an action to have the Court determine that his acts do not constitute an infringement of the intellectual property rights of a rights owner. For a quite long time patent owners were squeezed between conflicting approaches in…
The injunction gap is a frequently discussed characteristic of those European jurisdictions, Hungary being one such country, whose patent litigation systems are bifurcated. In a preliminary injunction proceeding in Hungary the court does not assess the validity of the patent in suit, at least not simply at the level of arguments, although decisions on invalidity…
