On June 17, 2022, WTO members adopted a waiver to the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) allowing suspension of patent related to the Covid-19 pandemic,…
Readers who have followed our last two blog entries and the vast number of comments received, will have seen the following two conclusions surfacing. First, although the UPC 's Protocol on…
Ahead of their meeting late June, a petition calling for a conference of ministers of contracting states under Article 4a EPC has been sent to the members of the Administrative Council of the EPO.…
The Brazilian Patent Office (BRPTO) is improving its examination procedure, trying to reduce the backlog. As more decisions are issued, we are learning about the approach of the examiners to…
Every year the Japan Patent Office (JPO) publishes a status report in spring, and this year’s report (the “Status Report 2022”) was published on March 30, 2022. The Status Report 2022 contains…
Petitioner expert testimony in inter partes review of a surgical tool patent was more credible than patent owner’s expert that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to…
The present case relates to the admittance of a new ground for opposition which was raised during the oral proceedings before the opposition division but had deliberately not been decided upon by the…
In certain technological fields, it is necessary to choose a solution and adopt it as a standard. Imagine, for example, if each electronic device came with a different socket-outlet format or if each…
The judgment addresses the question of whether an employee’s right to additional remuneration from the employer for use of an invention they created depends on whether the employer obtained a patent…
The creation of a dedicated administrative tribunal could be a way to improve the settlement of labour disputes at the European Patent Office. Eric De Brabandere, professor of international dispute…