Where should the “central” division of the planned EU Patent Court be located: are we asking the wrong question?
Last December, the negotiations relating to the future creation of a Patent Court for the European Union (“EU”) collapsed as a consequence of the failure on the part of Germany, the United Kingdom and France to reach an agreement on the location of the so-called “central” division. As is usually the case in this type of negotiations, in order to avoid the lack of agreement on this point jeopardising the negotiation process, over the years the negotiators had decided to put this hot topic on the back burner and defer a decision on this very difficult point for the time being. But now that the time has come to bite the bullet, the topic has become a stumbling block in the final stages of the n [...]
Commercial courts of Barcelona go one step further towards specialisation
There seems to be ample consensus in that Justice is better administered by specialised Judges than by non-specialised Judges. With this view in mind, in 1993 the Barcelona Court of Appeal took a groundbreaking step forward by conferring exclusive competence to one section (Section 15) to hear appeals filed in intellectual property cases. The successful experience of Section 15 inspired the Spanish Parliament when it created the new Commercial Courts (“Juzgados de lo Mercantil”), which began operating on 1 September 2004. Before the creation of these Commercial Courts, any civil Court of First Instance based in cities such as Barcelona or Madrid, which are the capitals of Spanish Autonomous [...]
Is the ECJ’s judgment in Medeva in line with EPC (2000)?
The recent judgment from the ECJ of 24 November 2011 in case C-322/10 (“Medeva”) has surprised the patent community, since the ECJ appears to have changed the view expressed in its judgment of 16 September of 1999 in case C-392/97 (“Farmitalia”), where the Court declared that it was not for the ECJ, but for national Courts, to decide whether or not a product (for example, a combination of two active ingredients) was “protected” by the “basic” patent. Taking into account that patent law has not yet been harmonized throughout the European Union (“EU”), the answer given by the ECJ in the Farmitalia case appeared to make sense. The fact that the Farmitalia decision might lead some national Court [...]
Atorvastatine, Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo), 11 November 2011
The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal , dismissing a revocation action against the patent in suit, which protected the calcium salt of atorvastatin. The Supreme court held that (i) the Bolar provision does not apply with retrospective effect, because its origin and rationale is different from the Experimental Use Exception; and (ii.) an invention that results from a selection between two lists of some length is new.
Click here for the full text of this case. A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.KluwerIPCases.com.
[...]AN EU PATENTS VESSEL WITHOUT CABINS (AND NOW EVEN SEATS) FOR ITALY AND SPAIN?
By Miquel Montañá
In year 2021, Italy will celebrate the 600th anniversary of the patent granted by the Republic of Florence to Filippo Brunelleschi for his ship “Il Badalone”, the first patent ever granted. Quite ironically, the fathers of the first patent, and of the first Patent Act, approved by the Republic of Venice in 1474 and then copied throughout Europe, have been left out of the project to create a European Union Patents Court. Spain has also been left out, whose Francisco de Vitoria and his fellows crafted the foundations of international law on which the new EU Patents Court is sought to be founded.
In a seminar organized by the Commission in Brussels on 3 November 2010 to deba [...]
Supreme court rejects requesting opinion from ECJ on TRIPS
Over the last few years, Spanish Courts have struggled to resolve an avalanche of cases where the core of the discussion was the legal effects of TRIPS on the effects of the Reservation made by Spain when it joined the European Patent Convention in 1986. According to this Reservation, patents filed before 7 October 1992 would have no effect in Spain insofar as they protected chemical or pharmaceutical products as such. In particular, in these cases Spanish Courts have been called on to decide whether the non-discrimination principle introduced in article 27.1 of TRIPS had any effect on the patents originally affected by the Reservation.
In a recent judgment dated 21 November 2011, the Suprem [...]
