To the extent that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not provide an explanation for its obviousness rejection of 13 claims of a Securus patent on a system and method for reviewing monitored…
An EPO board of appeal expressed its opinion that EBA case law implied that no further use should be made of the three-part “essentiality test” of T 331/87, for deciding whether removal of a feature…
In this case, the Federal Court of Justice considered the value of a secondary indicium for a decision on inventive step. The FCJ confirmed that if an invention differs from the decades-old general…
A board of appeal of the European patent office held that a decision to reject an opposition with grounds based on an improperly corrected version of the patent as granted maintains the text used in…
In the past decade, a new character of the patent theatre has made inroads into the case law of some EU Member States, "imported" from the so-called "EPO case law". Its name is "plausibility".
The…
The UK Parliament closed down for business yesterday, preceding the general elections of 8 June 2017. It means parliamentary approval of legislation which is necessary for UK ratification of the…
The Unitary Patent system adds to territorial fragmentation of patent law in Europe, rather than consolidating it, by leaving aside non-participating EU Member States. Also, it is based on rules in…
The sunrise session of day 2 was on second medical use claims and the hot European topic of plausibility.
Floyd LJ began with a potted history and explained that whereas plausibility can be raised in…
Activities of Patent assertion entities (PAEs) in Europe are increasing dramatically and are encouraged by the Rules of Procedure of the upcoming Unified Patent Court, especially the possibility to…
In Germany, the winning party is able to recover a significant amount of its costs from the losing party. This cost reimbursement, which is based on a statutory fee schedule, depends on the value of…
