Category: International IP
-
By Donald Zuhn — Reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its seventh annual list of top biotech/pharma patent stories. For 2013, we identified fourteen stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe had (or are likely to have) the greatest impact on biotech/pharma patent practitioners…
-
Historically, it was widely thought that it was possible to obtain a separate supplementary protection certificates (SPC) for each product covered by a patent. However, in its judgment in Medeva in 2011, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) held that where a patent protects a product, only one SPC may be granted…
-
Generally, the European Patent Office does not allow claims to methods involving the use of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes. It was therefore perhaps not surprising that the Examiner objected to the claims of EP 05028411.6, which related to a method for obtaining pluripotent embryonic stem cells from an embryo. In defence of…
-
A recent UKIPO decision will extend the term of SPCs by a few days. The decision concerned Genzyme Corporation's product colesevelam hydrochloride, which was the subject of an SPC. Genzyme disputed the term of the SPC on two grounds. First, Genzyme argued that the term of the SPC should be calculated using the date of…
-
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has recently ruled that an emergency Marketing Authorisation (MA) for a plant protection product does not provide a valid basis for an SPC for that plant protection product. Background Clothiamidine is the active ingredient of the insecticide product, Poncho®. Clothiamidine was protected by European patent EP0376279,…
-
The UK Patents Court recently issued a judgement which referred four questions to the CJEU in the case Actavis Group v Boehringer Ingelheim that aim to clarify how the SPC Regulation ought to be interpreted in respect of products having combinations of active ingredients. This referral follows three earlier referrals to the CJEU concerning the…
-
Actavis v Boehringer [2013] EWHC 2927 related to a dispute over the combination of telmisartan and hydrochlorothiazide, which was marketed by Boehringer and protected by an SPC. Actavis wanted to sell the combination product and believed the SPC to be invalid, but agreed to give an interim undertaking not to sell the combination product, pending the…
-
Our colleagues at J.A. Kemp in the United Kingdom have advised us that they have received advance notice that the administrative council of the European Patent Office (EPO) has voted to amend Rule 36 EPC to remove the controversial 24-month time limit within which European divisional applications may be filed. The sole criterion set forth…
-
Editor's note: The following notice was reprinted with permission from Forresters. Our August 2013 News item: "EPO divisional deadline U-turn in the offing…" seems prescient. We now learn that the EPO has made formal proposals to remove the current two-year time limit for filing divisionals. Instead, the EPO proposes that applicants can file divisionals (and…
-
The UK High Court recently gave its judgment in the case of Merck, Sharp & Dohme Corp. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Ltd (collectively referred to in the judgement as BMS) v Teva Pharma B.V. and Teva UK Ltd (Teva) (decision). The judgement is interesting as it is one of the few so called "quia timet"…
Patent Docs 