Category: International IP
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By Kevin E. Noonan — One of the signal achievements of late 20th Century trade diplomacy was the ratification of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and specifically the Trade-related Aspects on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). These international agreements created the World Trade Organization and changed national practices regarding…
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By Donald Zuhn — Last month, the European Patent Office announced the launch of a new machine translation service, Patent Translate. Patent Translate, which uses Google Translate technology, allows users to translate between English and French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, or Swedish. The EPO press release on the launch noted that translations offered by the…
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By Charlotte Teall — The European Patent Office ("EPO") recently announced that most of its fees will increase by between 5 and 10 per cent from 1 April 2012. The changes in fees A comparison of the old and new fees is given below (this shows the changes in the most common fees paid to…
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By Jon Gowshall & Charlotte Fox — Background The invention protected by a patent is defined in the claims. Those claims must be new — they must not cover anything previously published. The applicant can amend the claims during prosecution of a patent application to grant, particularly to avoid newly-discovered earlier publications, covered by the…
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By Donald Zuhn — On Tuesday, the European Patent Office announced that it received 243,000 applications in 2011, which constituted a 3% increase from the 237,500 applications the EPO received in 2010. The EPO granted 62,115 patents, which was 7% more than the number of patent grants in 2010. With regard to the geographic origin…
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By Donald Zuhn — Reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its fifth annual list of top biotech/pharma patent stories. For 2011, we identified a dozen 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…
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By Donald Zuhn — Reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its fifth annual list of top biotech/pharma patent stories. For 2011, we identified a dozen 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…
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By Donald Zuhn — Reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its fifth annual list of top biotech/pharma patent stories. For 2011, we identified a dozen 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…
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Intellectual Property called a "Priority Issue" By Kevin E. Noonan — The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) issued a Report on the extent to which China is in compliance with its obligations under the TRIPS provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), as required for membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The…
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By Christopher Bond — In Ranbaxy (UK) Ltd v AstraZeneca AB, the England and Wales High Court considered the scope of "Swiss" medical use claims. This important decision clarifies how these types of claims can be infringed. Background: "Swiss" Claims The European Patent Convention (EPC) expressly excludes methods of treatment from being patentable. The reason…
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