Case Law

The FCJ held that: a) An objection by one party can lead to the petitioner being required to demonstrate a legitimate interest in the inspection of the files of a patent nullity procedure, but only…

Whilst being wary of placing too much emphasis on statistics (the phrase “lies, damn lies and statistics” comes to mind), the authors have seen figures which suggest that the last ten years have…

The FCJ ordered that the petitioner must be granted access to the entire file wrapper. The objections raised by the plaintiff with regard to parts of the file which allow conclusions to be drawn on…

The Federal Patent Court (FPC) ruled on the interplay between limitation proceedings before the EPO and a national nullity action, and the circumstances in which a request for a declaratory judgment…

The Federal Court of Justice confirmed that the definition of the person skilled in the art aims at defining a fictive person, from whose point of view the prior art and the patent is considered…

The FCJ held that when assessing inventive step the claim should be interpreted so that the disclosed embodiments are taken into account. Prior art that is far removed from the disclosed embodiments…

In an interference proceeding, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board correctly determined that claims 65-67 of applicant General Hospital Corporation’s (GHC’s) U.S. Patent Application No. 13/789,575 for…

In preliminary injunction proceedings, the influential Barcelona Court of Appeal held that reasons of "congruence" bind the court to basing the assessment of inventive step strictly on the particular…

The Federal Court of Justice confirmed that a nullity defendant can defend its patent to a limited extent only insofar as it is attacked by the nullity plaintiff. The limited defence of the patent in…