Category: News from Abroad

From our Foreign Correspondents — While many patiently await developments in the pending U.S. interference proceedings relating to the CRISPR patents in the U.S., matters are progressing in Europe.  The Opposition Division (OD) of the European Patent Office (EPO) has just issued (on June 29, 2021) its written decision in the case of EP3241902, owned…

By Miao Li* — The 4th amendment to the Chinese Patent Law ("New CN Patent Law") will take effect on June 1, 2021.  This amendment represents a significant milestone in the evolution of the patent regulatory framework in China, given the unprecedented level of protection to which patent owners will become entitled.  A particularly notable…

By Vladislav Ugryumov* — On March 1, 2021, the Eurasian Patent Office (EAPO) launched the EAPO Pharmaceutical Register (the 'Register').  The Register lists Eurasian patents that relate to the active pharmaceutical ingredients of the drugs according to their International Non-proprietary Names (INN).  The Register resides on the EAPO web site.  It is currently available in…

By Dan Feigelson* — Many patent practitioners will never have need to file a patent application in Israel, a country of nine million people that's geographically smaller than New Jersey.  But if you're one of those practitioners who does file in Israel from time to time — and I suspect that readers of Patent Docs…

    By Grant Shoebridge* — In July 1969, as a young boy, I watched in awe, along with the rest of world, as the United States of America put two men on the moon.  Years later in 2011, the then Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, stood before U.S. Congress and recalled the same moon-landing memory…

By Tim Fitzgerald* and Michael Finney** — 'Swiss format' or 'Swiss-type' patent claims have a general structure similar to the following: Use of compound X in the manufacture of a formulation for the treatment of medical condition Y. Swiss-type claims were originally approved by the Swiss Patent Office as a mechanism to allow for protection…

By Antony Craggs — Since the introduction of the doctrine of equivalents in the UK in Actavis v Lilly, it has been questioned whether a claim can be extended by said doctrine (so that a product infringes the claim) where such an extension would render the claim obvious over the prior art at the priority…

By Hanns-Juergen Grosse* — The approach of the European Patent Office (EPO) to prohibition of double patenting is well established and may, at a first glance, also seem well founded. Broadly speaking, the prohibition of double patenting is meant to mean that two patents cannot be granted to the same applicant for one invention (in…

By Charlotte Teall — The long-awaited UK Supreme Court decision concerning Warner-Lambert's Lyrica® patent was handed down in December.  In summary, the Supreme Court dismissed Warner-Lambert's appeal and upheld that the patent did not sufficiently disclose the claimed medical uses, i.e., all pain including peripheral and neuropathic pain.  They also found that the claims were…

The following article was reprinted with permission from Sargent & Krahn. Recently, the Chilean Government submitted to Congress a Law Bill modifying the Industrial Property Law, the National Institute of Industrial Property Law as well as minor modifications to the Criminal Procedure Law. The Proposed Bill intends to update the corresponding legislation of trademarks, patents,…