As the Unitary Patent (UP) system is expected to start functioning in 2017, proprietors of European patents are faced with the choice to opt these out of the jurisdiction of the Unified Patent Court (UPC), or to stay in the new system. The main advantage of the UPC is that its decisions are enforceable in…
by Claire Phipps-Jones ♪ “This indecision’s bugging me” ♪ On 23 June 2016, UK voters will be asked “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”. David Cameron has confirmed that following a vote to leave, a non-retractable notice will be served under Article 50 of the…
Wolters Kluwer released a new title last week in the Information Law Series: The Inventiveness Requirement in Patent Law by Lodewijk Pessers. Pessers recently received his Ph.D. in this subject. We asked the author to briefly describe the book’s contents. By Lodewijk Pessers ‘The Inventiveness Requirement in Patent Law’ tries to answer the question of…
The federal district court in Tyler, Texas, correctly construed the term “mountable” in a patent for a digital picture frame asserted by Profectus Technology against the manufacturers and sellers of tablet computer devices as “having a feature for mounting,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled (Prospectus Technology LLC v. Huawei…
The federal district court in Houston did not abuse its discretion in enforcing a forum selection clause between Wellogix, on one side, and SAP America, Inc. and SAP AG (collectively, “SAP”) on the other, in holding that trade secret claims brought by Wellogix against SAP were required to be dismissed because they were subject to…
Although observers think a ‘leave’ vote in the UK Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016 could be a great setback or even the end for the Unitary Patent (UP) system even before it launches, preparations go on unabatedly. Recruitment of judges for the Unified Patent Court (UPC) is underway, a Draft Code of Conduct has been published, and at its…
Swiss procedural law foresees the possibility to file a protective letter if someone believes it will be confronted with a request for ex-parte interim measures without being heard. The corresponding provision of the Swiss Civil Procedure Code (CPC) reads as follows: 1 Any person who has reason to believe that an ex-parte interim measure […]…
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…
In a recent judgment of 2 February 2016, the Barcelona Court of Appeal (Section 15) was called on to interpret the scope of protection of what are known as “product-by-process” claims. One of the issues discussed by the parties was whether the scope of protection of claim 1 of patent EP 731.646 B1, which claims…
Let’s begin with the German statute and compare it with the EPC. Section 34 of the German Patent Act (GPA) stipulates the following: (3) An application shall contain: 1. the name of the applicant; 2. a request for the grant of a patent, in which the invention shall be clearly and concisely designated; 3. one…
