January 2016: start of the so-called provisional period. October 2016: first cases taken. That may be a realistic timetable for the future Unified Patent Court, according to Kevin Mooney, chairman of…
Cost reductions obtained by introducing the Unitary Patent package should not be nullified by the setting of renewal fees at a high level. This would amount to the patent offices ‘clawing back’ the…
The crucial decision of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) on Spain’s objections to the Unitary Patent Package will be delivered on 5 May 2015. The date was published on the CJEU’s website earlier…
The European business sector and the European Commission have voiced concern about the level of the renewal fees for the Unitary Patent, as proposed by the European Patent Office (EPO).
The two EPO…
The Board of Appeal rejected an attempt to apply the fiction of novelty of “medical” substances and compositions of article 54(5) EPC to a dialysis membrane. Contrary to T2003/08 the claimed dialysis…
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,…
Once the Unified Patent Court has started functioning, local divisions may have to consolidate into regional divisions or shut down altogether, because it turns out they have too few cases to prosper…
The Board emphasized that there was a relation between who was to be considered to be the skilled person for judging inventive step on one hand and the choice of the closest prior art on the other…
Inventions regarding a method of improving the yield of triploid seedless watermelons by pollination with a specific type of diploid water melon are not to be regarded as an essentially biological…
