My British colleague has already commented brilliantly on the UK ruling in this case from the point of view of plausibility (see here). For my part, I’d like to comment the French ruling in the same case, which takes the opposite view to the UK decision. We shall see that the French position is particularly…

1. Introduction In an important decision of February 8, 2022 the Brussels Dutch Court of Enterprises (hereafter the “Court of Enterprises”) declared null and void a patent on an “apparatus, system and method for filling containers with fluids” (hereafter the “patent in suit”). The decision is interesting for multiple reasons, but this article will only…

The case concerns the transfer of a priority right from an employee to his/her employer and the relevant time zone for determining the priority: 1. The validity of the transfer of rights to an invention by the employer by claiming it as a service invention is governed by the law applicable to the employment contract….

On 10 October 2018 the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in the matter of Icescape Limited v Ice-World International BV & Ors*. Three discrete issues were considered by the Court and, although the decision of the Lord Justices of Appeal ultimately did not change the effect of the first instance judgment, the opinions…

The Federal Court of Justice held that the purpose of determining the technical problem (objective) in invalidity proceedings is to locate the starting point of skilled efforts to enrich the state of the art without knowledge of the invention, in order to assess, in the subsequent and separate examination of patentability, whether or not the…

On 3 March 2017, the English Patents Court (Henry Carr J) issued a decision (here) in the joined claims filed by Fujifilm Kyowa Biologics (FKB) and Samsung Bioepis/Biogen (S/B) against AbbVie Biotechnology Limited (AbbVie) for so-called Arrow declarations in relation to dosage regimes of adalimumab (sold by AbbVie under the brand name Humira) for the…

by Steven Willis Yesterday, the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in Idenix v Gilead [2016] EWCA Civ 1089, a dispute involving SOVALDI® (sofosbuvir), which is sold by Gilead as a treatment for chronic hepatitis C infection in adults. At first instance, Arnold J held (in an epic 621 paragraph judgment) that Idenix’s Patent…

In 2010 the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal took the badge of Swiss type claims from patentees (G 02/08), and since then they cannot use it anymore. Six years later two cases on (infringement of) Swiss type / second medical use claims are knockin’ on the Dutch Supreme Court’s door. While the Enlarged Board put…

by Rachel Mumby Bexsero, the Meningitis B vaccine marketed by GSK, has been the subject of many newspaper headlines in the UK over the last year, with parents seeking to persuade the UK Government to offer the vaccine to all children under the age of 11 as a matter of routine. Few will have been…

A new decision by the German Federal Court of Justice (X ZR 112/13 – Teilreflektierende Folie) provides another illustrative example of the FCJ’s fairly generous and applicant-friendly case law on the allowability of amendments and priority. The patent at stake was a European Patent directed to the use of an image projector, a reflective surface…