In his 1913 essay Totem und Taboo, Freud defined taboo as a prohibition related to what is considered sacred or impure. The famous psychoanalyst insists on the irrationality of the phenomenon. Thus,…
As Bob Hudec explained in his legendary The GATT Legal System and World Trade Diplomacy, GATT's (since 1995, WTO) long-standing practice of seeking to adopt decisions by consensus finds its roots in…
The fundamental question which types of products are amenable to SPC protection and which types of marketing authorizations allow the filing of SPCs has aroused much controversy in Europe, and…
Since the Eli Lilly v. Canada award of 2017, the relevance of international investment law for patents has been known to a wider public. In response to the revocation of two Canadian patents…
In July 2017, the Patents Court of Barcelona handed down a decision finding that "Swiss-type" claims were affected by the Reservation made by Spain when it ratified the European Patent Convention (…
As most readers will know, yesterday the European Commission published a proposal to amend Regulation 469/2009 concerning the supplementary protection certificate for medicinal products (the "SPC…
During the past decade, Spanish courts have debated the impact of the TRIPS Agreement ("TRIPS") on patents the applications of which were filed before 7 October 1992, that is, before Spain's…
The Finnish Supreme Court held that the reversal of the burden of proof stipulated in Article 34 TRIPs as implemented in the Finnish Patent Act does not per se require a party to disclose its…
TRIPS has historically been criticized on the grounds that it makes access to medicines in developing countries more difficult. To address this concern, on 30 August 2003 the World Trade Organization…
