The Paris District Court clarified its interpretation of Article 123 EPC regarding disclaimer allowability and allowed a disclaimer restoring novelty of a patent.
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[...]In its “Leflunomid” decision of 24 July 2012 (Case X ZR 126/09), the FCJ declared a patent claim to be invalid which covered a combination of leflunomide and teriflunomide, on the grounds that it had long been known in the prior art (for 100 years) that some leflunomide spontaneously and unavoidably converts teriflunomide over time (by a ring opening process). The combination was therefore obvious to the expert. The decision will be published in the Kluwer IP case databank.
The plaintiff in the case at issue was a generic company which had launched what it thought was a patent-free mono-product containing just leflunomide. However, due to the conversion of some leflunomide into terifl [...]
In our post on 30 October 2012 we referred to forthcoming appeals dealing with how the question of obviousness should be tackled by the English courts. The Court of Appeal has now given its verdict in several judgments. The latest decision in Regeneron v Genentech dealt not only with the question of obviousness but also questions of novelty and sufficiency, construction and infringement. The Court of Appeal has upheld the decision of Mr Justice Floyd at first instance* in the English Patents Court that Genentech’s patent was valid and infringed.
A brief summary of the facts: Regeneron and Bayer applied to revoke Genentech’s EP (UK) 1 238 986 (the “986 patent”) which discloses and cla [...]
A composition obtainable on the market is at least not then novel if the composition can be analyzed and reproduced by a skilled person without undue burden. For this purpose, it is sufficient for a complex com¬po-sition that is not easily identifiable, if the skilled person can establish a manageable number of hypotheses on the potential composition, one of which could then be confirmed with the available analysis tools. A unique outcome that excludes any other conceivable composition is not required.
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[...]The Supreme Court held that claiming priority of an earlier application requires a direct and unambiguous disclosure in the priority document of all features of the technical teaching as defined in the claims. If the claimed invention is characterized by a particular property of one of its components that has not (clearly) been disclosed in the priority document, and that permits a person of ordinary skill to make a deliberate selection out of a range of different embodiments (here: insensitivity to UV light), the priority document lacks a clear and unambiguous disclosure of the invention.
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Now that we are less than one month away from implementation of the First-Inventor-To-File provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA), stakeholders are considering whether to file new patent applications now, to secure examination under the current First-To-Invent patent system, or wait until March 16, 2013, so that the applications will be governed by the new U.S. patent laws. While there are a few situations where delaying filing could be advantageous, stakeholders do not need to wait to file their patent applications until March 16, 2013 in order to maximize their prior art effect.
35 USC § 102(e) Versus 35 USC § 102(a)(2)
The prior art effect of a published U.S. or PCT appl [...]
