Around 200 judges, patent litigators, patent attorneys, other patent experts, representatives of scientific institutions and companies, government officials, The Hague mayor Jan van Zanen and Dutch minister of Economic Affairs and Climate, Micky Adriaansens, attended the opening ceremony of the Dutch local division of the Unified Patent Court today in The Hague. Minister Adriaansens stressed…
In two recent decisions the District Court of The Hague assumed cross-border jurisdiction in FRAND / Standard Essential Patent (‘SEP’) proceedings. In a first case the Court assumed jurisdiction on claims related to the FRANDness of a SEPs (patent pool) license. In a second case the Court assumed jurisdiction on an anti-anti-suit injunction (‘AASI’) claim…
The Dutch authorities have handed over to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) its new premises, located in the Zuidas business area of Amsterdam. On 15 November EMA’s Executive Director Guido Rasi ‘signed the lease agreement and thanked the Dutch authorities for reaching this important milestone on time’, according to a report on the EMA website. EU…
The focus in The Netherlands on the option of compounding medicines as a means to circumvent the use of (expensive) authorised medicinal products of pharmaceutical companies and to pressurize them into lowering their prices, is confusing and possibly misleading and not necessarily good for patients. Attorney-at-law Hanneke Later-Nijland, also a trained pharmacist and a former…
A court in the Netherlands has ruled that two Dutch patents for processing teff, a kind of grain which has been used for thousands of years to make injera, the fermented pancake that Ethiopians eat with their meals, are null and void. The Ethiopian government has welcomed the verdict. The patents had led to outrage…
When a company is not prepared to charge a socially acceptable price in the Netherlands for a medicine, the government should use other instruments such as compulsory licences, encouraging pharmacy preparation and allowing patients to order medicinal products abroad in order to ensure that the medicine is available for patients. The Dutch Council for Public…
A new president of the European Patent Organisation, the person who will succeed the controversial president Benoît Battistelli in June 2018, will be chosen this autumn. That is the expectation of Martijn van Dam, Dutch secretary of state for Economic Affairs. Van Dam said this in a debate last week with parliament on the ‘deteriorating…
The SUEPO, the biggest trade union at the European Patent Organisation, filed a complaint against The Netherlands before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on 8 May 2017. According to the SUEPO, as host to one of the main offices of the European Patent Office, The Netherlands should have acted to end the breach…
The Dutch draft legislation to implement the Unitary Patent Package in the Netherlands includes an interesting ‘safety net’ provision. If registration of unitary effect of a European patent is rejected by the EPO and this is confirmed by the UPC (as the case may be), there will be a possibility to validate the patent in…
The behavior of EPO president Benoît Battistelli is bad for the reputation of the European Patent Office and may in the longer term force him to resign. Wouter Pors, IP practitioner of Bird & Bird, said this in an interview with Kluwer IP Law, on the occasion of a recent decision of the Dutch appeal…
