The Enlarged Board of Appeal in reply to three questions of law submitted to it, concludes as follows: Question 1: When an international application is filed and published under the PCT in an…
1. The Enlarged Board of Appeal considered the meaning that is to be given to the exclusion of patents on methods for ‘treatment by surgery’ (Article 53(c) EPC). The current construction used by the…
The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court's judgment that HGS' patent relating to a new protein called Neutrokine-α was invalid for lack of industrial application. The Court of Appeal agreed with the…
The District Court of The Hague held that Abbott does not infringe Medinol's patent. According to the Court there is also no reason to accept infringement by equivalence, since the meander patterns…
The case concerned the validity of a ‘selection patent’. The Court of Appeal held that there is no special approach to be adopted in determining the validity of selection patents and that UK law…
The Federal Court of Justice presented the following questions to the European Court of Justice: 1. How should the term 'human embryos' in Article 6 para. 2 lit. c Directive 98/44 EC be understood? a…
Correction of a letter of withdrawal under Rule 139 EPC is only possible if the public has not yet been officially informed about the withdrawal.
A full summary of this case has been published on…
The patent proprietor appealed a decision of the Opposition Division, wherein the Opposition Division decided to maintain the patent in amended form. In appeal the patent proprietor filed a new main…
In this case the board ruled that a claimed measurement method was excluded as a method of treatment by therapy under Article 53(c) EPC because it encompassed administering a compound that could have…
The District Court of The Hague, Administrative Division, considers the granting of an SPC to a patent proprietor that does not possess a market authorization for a medicine protected by the patent,…
