Safety Device for Car Occupants, Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof), 30 April 2009
- By Anja Lunze,
for Kluwer IP Cases
For an invention to be considered obvious it is usually necessary that there are additional incentives that go beyond the identification of the technical problem and lead the person skilled in the art to search the solution for this technical problem on the path of the invention.
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[...]Interleaving & deinterleaving apparatus/SAMSUNG, European Patent Office (EPO Board of Appeal), 30 April 2009
- By Ferry van Looijengoed,
for Kluwer IP Cases
Claim 1 of the patent application contained the feature that ‘the device is adapted to generate L addresses, which are smaller in number than N = Ng × 2m2 virtual addresses for reading data from said interleaver memory in which L data bits are stored’. The Board of Appeal noted that it might be true that claim 1 did not imply anything about optimal choices of m and Ng. However, according to the present Board, it is not a requirement of the European Patent Convention, and in particular not of Article 84 EPC, that the claims should specify the optimum way of carrying out the invention.
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Text mining using multidimensional subspaces/BOEING, European Patent Office (EPO Board of Appeal), 24 April 2009
- By Ferry van Looijengoed,
for Kluwer IP Cases
The invention related to text mining using mathematical techniques such that information can be presented in a way that can be more easily understood or evaluated by a user. The Board of Appeal noted that it is a fundamental question whether such an invention is within a field of technology. It can hardly be regarded as forming a physical entity nor does the method result in a change in the data, but merely in their representation. It could therefore be argued that the invention is essentially a mathematical method pursuant to Article 52(2)(a) EPC, resulting in a presentation of information pursuant to Article 52(2)(d) EPC.
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Druckmaschinen-Temperierungssystem II/Printing press temperature control system II, Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof), 21 April 2009
- By Clemens Rübel,
for Kluwer IP Cases
The Federal Court of Justice ruled that the subject matter of a patent does not extend beyond the content of the application as filed when terms are used in the claims that are not literally used in the application text but are summarizing words for longer descriptions in the application as filed.
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[...]Generic companies v. Lundbeck, District Court The Hague (Rechtbank Den Haag), 08 April 2009
- By Mark van Gardingen, Brinkhof,
for Kluwer IP Cases
The District Court of The Hague held that all claims of Lundbeck’s escalitopram patent were invalid for lack of inventive step. The District Court nullified the patent and also called the Dutch Supplementary Protection Certificate which was based upon the patent null. The District Court’s decision contains many references to the 4 May 2007 decision of Mr Justice Kitchin of the High Court of England and Wales (Patents Court). Kitchin nullified conclusions 1 and 3 for insufficiency, but considered the patent otherwise valid. On relevant points the Dutch Court ‘respectfully disagrees’ with the English decisions on the basis of different/further evidence.
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Ratiopharm et al v. Lundbeck, District Court The Hague (Rechtbank Den Haag), 08 April 2009
The District Court of The Hague held that all claims of Lunbeck’s escalitopram patent were invalid for lack of inventive step. The District Court nullified the patent and also called the Dutch Supplementary Protection Certificate which was based upon the patent null. The District Court’s decision contains many references to the 4 May 2007 decision of Mr Justice Kitchin of the High Court of England and Wales (Patents Court). Kitchin nullified conclusions 1 and 3 for insufficiency, but considered the patent otherwise valid. On relevant points the Dutch Court ‘respectfully disagrees’ with the English decisions on the basis of different/further evidence.
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