Inventive step

A further interesting decision handed down by the Judges of the English Patents Court prior to the Easter break was a judgment from Nugee J concerning proceedings between E. Mishan and Hozelock…

Last week the Board of Appeal issued a decision holding that Google’s patent application 04784004.6 was unallowable on the ground of lack of inventive step. Amongst other things, the decision…

The UK Supreme Court today handed down its decision in Actavis v ICOS. The decision was unanimous, with Lord Hodge giving the only judgment. The case concerns two principal questions. First, how…

On 1 February 2019, the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court granted an injunction against Mylan AB's sale of the product Tadalafil »Mylan« containing 5 mg tadalafil in Denmark. On 7 September 2018,…

In nullity proceedings initiated by Accord Healthcare (“Accord”) the District Court of The Hague has held Shire-NPS Pharmaceuticals’ (“NPS”) patent EP 1 203 761, the basic patent for an SPC covering…

On 16 January 2019, the District Court of The Hague ruled that the Dutch part of Eli Lilly and Company's patent EP 1 313 508 is valid. The judgment was handed down in an invalidation action brought…

The EPO’s Problem-Solution-Approach is, on the face of it, simple and widely applied also in the national jurisprudence of the EPC member states. It starts with the determination of a “closest prior…

Relevant prior art may prove not to be useful as a starting point for an attack on inventive step if the prior art teaching is negated by later studies before the effective date of the patent claims…

The Court of Appeal upheld the first instance decision that the patent in suit lacked novelty and inventive step over the prior art. The Court confirmed, following Halliburton v Smith, that despite…