A patent that is limited during the course of the proceedings (even after the pleadings) is held to have been so limited ab initio if the limitation is duly registered. When a European patent is granted and validated, an existing national patent loses its effect only for the invention claimed in the European patent. The…
To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the top 3 most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the top posts from April, May and June. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
The Administrative Council of the European Patent Office unanimously adopted the EPO’s Strategic Plan 2023 during the AC meeting earlier this week in Munich. According to an announcement published on the EPO website today, president António Campinos said: ‘This Strategic Plan is a clear vision of how we want our Office to look in the…
The Court held that a selection invention is inventive if the compound of the selection offers surprisingly advantageous or improved properties over the prior art compounds. These properties should already be plausible from the patent application as filed. Further, a selection invention would be obvious to the skilled person if they would assume a neutral…
As of 1 July 2019, Rule 69.1(a) PCT will be amended to provide for the International Preliminary Examining Authority to start the international preliminary examination upon receipt of the demand, instead of waiting until the expiration of the applicable time limit for filing a demand. This means that applicants will no longer need to expressly…
Late in 2018, Board 3.5.07 issued two decisions on appeals from Examining Division decisions, in which the length of the examination procedure was excessive. The Board decided that such delays can amount to a substantial procedural violation, but that it is only equitable to reimburse the appeal fee if the applicant took some proactive measures…
A strike at the EPO, which was to be held during the meeting of the Administrative Council in Munich later this week, has been called off. The EPO’s trade union SUEPO had submitted a call for a strike, which would have been the first one since Campinos took office last year, ‘after a rather disappointing…
Pemetrexed, yet again: last Wednesday the District Court of The Hague, swimming against the current and after a deep dive in the prosecution file, decided that Fresenius did not infringe Eli Lilly’s ‘pemetrexed disodium’ patent with a generic product that does not contain pemetrexed disodium, not even by equivalence. The basic facts of the widespread…
The future of the Unified Patent Court and the Unitary Patent system may be uncertain, it hasn’t stopped Milan from promoting its ambition to become the seat of London branch of the UPC’s central division, in case this will be relocated due to the Brexit. Later this month Milanese representatives will have a meeting with…
The Federal Court of Justice held that introducing only selected features of an example into a claim is allowable if the resulting combination in the claimed generality is derivable from the application as originally filed. Further, a general incentive from the prior art does not render the specific embodiment of an invention obvious. Case date:…
