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…
A Markush claim is a type of claim commonly used in chemical and pharmaceutical fields. On December 20, 2017, in Beijing Winsunny Harmony Science & Technology Co., Ltd. v. Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd, (…
Suppose you are a (patent) attorney in a pharmaceutical company and want to advise your company how to best protect the results of a clinical trial designed to find out the best possible treatment…
In one of the saga of cases that involved Societé des Produits Nestlé and companies that are trying to market capsules compatible with Nescafé's Dolce Gusto system, the defendant alleged, among other…
Around this time last year, in Edwards Lifesciences v Boston Scientific [2017], His Honour Judge Hacon (sitting as a High Court Judge) had the opportunity to analyse two interesting aspects of UK…
Last year, Actavis, Teva and Mylan (“Actavis”) sought revocation in the English Patents Court of two patents relating to tadalafil, which is sold by Eli Lilly (“Lilly”) as the active ingredient in…
Patent lawyers in the UK have spent the last three months pondering, debating and at times indulging in an element of despair (to put it mildly) about what might be the impact of the judgment of the…
For the first time, the Spanish Supreme Court made far-reaching observations on key issues of the assessment of inventive step and, in particular, on a) the reformulation of the "objective technical…
When analysing inventive activity, one risk that appears to be here to stay is that of hindsight. As Richard Ebbink very aptly put it in a workshop held at the INGRES Institute in Zurich on 8 and 9…
