An EPO board held that observations filed by third parties during inter partes appeal must be disregarded by the board, unless they concern amendments during opposition or appeal, in which case the…
President Benoit Battistelli of the European Patent Office hopes the United Kingdom will stay in the Unitary Patent system despite the Brexit vote of 23 June 2016. He has written this in a blogpost…
Today, the 4th annual conference of Premier Cercle regarding the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court took place in Munich. It will be no surprise that the outcome of the UK referendum was…
The Board of Appeal held that “Biogen insufficiency”, the situation in which the full extent of the monopoly claimed exceeds the technical contribution to the art, is not a distinct ground for…
European patent attorneys should make a joint effort and gather data to assess the impact of procedural issues on opposition procedures at the European Patent Office and, in the future, on …
Europe is preparing for the launch of the new Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court (UPC). A provisional phase for the UPC is expected to start later this year, with a view to a full start of…
There was a time where appeal before the EPO could be used to revisit anything that went wrong or was omitted in opposition proceedings.
Since 2003, when the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of…
Case reported and summarised by Gregory Bacon, Bristows LLP
The UK does not operate a system of automatically staying proceedings which concern validity of a European patent where there are ongoing…
President Benoît Battistelli of the European Patent Office (EPO), criticized for his harsh leadership, has survived the meeting of the supervisory Administrative Council (AC), but he has been put…
