Karlsruhe, 20.3.2020 The Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) issued its long-awaited decision in the case 2 BvR 739/17 on the constitutional appeal of Dr. Stjerna about the compatibility of the German ratification law for the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA) with the German Basic Law (BL) this morning. It declared the German Ratification Law…
On Friday 13 March 2020, Birss J handed down a pair of judgments in the litigation between Evalve (a member of the Abbott group of companies) and Edwards Lifesciences, a veteran of UK patent litigation over the past decade. In the first judgment Evalve’s two UK patents, EP (UK) 1 408 850 and EP (UK)…
The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany has announced it will publish its decision on the constitutional complaint against German ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPC) (case 2 BvR 739/17) on Friday 20 March 2020 at 9.30 am. According to the FCC’s press release, the decision is being made by the Senate (sitting with…
The Patents Court found Emson’s patents for an expandable garden hose obvious in light of a piece of prior art relating to a self-elongating hose for supplying oxygen to an oxygen mask for aviation crew. In its judgment, the Court considered in detail the law on public prior use, in particular whether separate instances of…
The EPO’s biennial fee increases come into force on 1 April 2020 and include a 20% hike of the appeal fee. At the same time, new appeal fee refund provisions are being introduced through an amendment to Rule 103 EPC. These are intended to encourage appellants to continuously review whether to continue or withdraw their…
A parliamentary committee in the UK has asked the government to clarify its position on the Unified Patent Court (UPC). Although late February the office of Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed to several media that the UK “will no longer seek to participate in the Unitary Patent project”, an official statement has not been issued….
Prior art that requires fundamental reconfiguration of the disclosed solution to end up with something falling under the scope of protection of a claim cannot normally render the claimed subject matter obvious. Case date: 17 January 2019 Case number: X ZR 8/17 Court: Federal Court of Justice of Germany A full summary of this case has been…
Recently the Hon’ble Delhi High Court in its judgement of CDE Asia Limited v. Jaideep Shekhar and Anr. CS (COMM) 124/2019 has interpreted and clarified the observations made by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in its judgement of Alloy’s Wobben and Anr. Vs. Yogesh Mehra and Ors. The Hon’ble Supreme Court had observed in the aforesaid…
While real news about one of the most popular topics of this blog, i.e. the UPC, is rare and no one following our blogs regularly (see e.g. 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019) should be greatly surprised about the UK’s decision to back out of the Unitary Patent System, the EPO continues to be a source…
The announcement of the UK government that it won’t participate in the Unitary Patent system has sent a shock wave through the European patent community. One issue is obvious from the reactions to the UK decision: the future of the system, which had been uncertain for some time due to the Brexit and the German…
