The Court of Appeal held that the duty to compensate the successful party’s legal costs in intellectual property proceedings, pursuant to Art. 14 of the Enforcement directive, also applies to invalidity claims, counterclaims and defenses by the alleged infringing party threatened with patent enforcement. To deny such compensation in respect of nullity claims or defenses that constitute an important defense against enforcements of intellectual property rights would be contrary to Article 6 ECHR.
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[...]The Board of Appeal ruled that color figures contained in the application when filed could be used as a basis for amendments. The board had to deal with the problem that no original copy of the color figures was available to the board. Therefore, the board considered it appropriate to compare sets of copies of the figures to discover whether it could be consistently determined that one of these sets contained the most information and to assume that the originally filed figures contained at least the information in that one set.
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[...]On 12 April 2013, Mr Justice Arnold gave judgment in the English High Court in Resolution Chemicals Limited v H Lundbeck A/S ([2013] EWHC 739 (Pat)). Resolution (a generic supplier company) sought revocation of Lundbeck’s SPC/GB02/049 (the “SPC”) for escitalopram, alleging invalidity of the basic patent EP (UK) 0 347 066 (“the 066 patent”). Although readers of this blog will be familiar with recent escitalopram litigation – a quick recap of the background facts:
escitalopram is the (+) enantiomer of citalopram (an anti-depressant drug of the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor type, first synthesised by Lundbeck in the early 1970s). Lundbeck then devised the method for synthe [...]
One of the topics hotly discussed within the intellectual property family over the last few years is whether or not “transit” is an act of infringement. Since, unlike patent law, trademark law is already harmonised at the EU level, many cases have reached the ECJ, which has generated a saga of judgments that does not appear to have satisfied anybody. In response to the criticism attracted by the last judgment of this saga (judgment dated 1 December 2011 in joined cases C-446/09 (Philips) and C-495/09 (Nokia), the European Commission has decided to include “transit” among the acts that the trademark owner is entitled to prohibit.
In particular, in its “Proposal for a Regulation of the Europea [...]
The Paris Court of Appeal clarified the interest of a potential competitor to seek the revocation of a patent. It was particularly unclear whether any competitor, current or potential, could have a legitimate interest in the form of a “clear the path” approach. However, in this case the Court held that Omnipharm had no legitimate interest to seek revocation of Merial’s patents, as it had failed to prove that it would be able to develop and market a competing product.
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Spain adopted the optional clause in Article 65 of the EPC, which requires a translation of the patent filed with the national patent office within 3 months of publication of the patent by EPO. The Supreme Court decided that this term starts on the date of publication of the announcement of the granting of the patent by EPO.
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