NIPC Law

Author Rklawton   Licence   CC BY-SA 4.0   Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Yesterday the Intellectual Property Office added a new para  125.17.8  on the Formstein defence  to its Manual of Patent Practice .  Considering that the defence is a doctrine of German law and that there has been no firm decision on whether that doctrine applies to this country, that is quite remarkable. Para 125.17.8 describes the doctrine as: "a principle developed under German patent law in relation to infringement and the doctrine of equivalents (DoE), whereby if an alleged infringer can show that an equivalent is a non-inventive variant of the claimed invention, then the patent’s scope for the purposes of determining any infringement is held to its normal construction – in other words the DoE does not apply." I have referred to the doctrine in  Patents - Technetix BV and others v Teleste Ltd . on 19 Feb 2010 and  Patents - Facebook Ireland Ltd v Vox...

  Jane Lambert Patents Court (Lord Justice Birss)  Facebook Ireland Ltd v Voxer IP LLC [2021] EWHC 1377 (Pat) (26 May 2021) This was an action by Facebook Ireland Ltd  ("Facebook") for the revocation of  EP 2 393 259 B1  ("the patent") held by Voxer IP LLC ("Voxer") and a counterclaim by Voxer for infringement of the patent. Voxer applied for the amendment of its patent and it was common ground that the patent would have to be revoked if the application had been refused. Facebook objected to the amendments on several grounds including  added matter .   It also contended that amendment would not cure the patent's invalidity.  The action and counterclaim came on for trial before Lord Justice Birss between 12 and 15 April 2021. He delivered judgment in Facebook Ireland Ltd v Voxer IP LLC [2021] EWHC 1377 (Pat) on 26 May 2021. The Patent The invention for which the patent was granted is called a telecommunication and multimedia management meth...

Rolls Building  Author: Basher Eyre Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Source Wikipedia Rolls Building   Jane Lambert Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (HH Judge Hacon) Technetix BV and others v Teleste Ltd [2019] EWHC 126 (IPEC) (29 Jan 2019) This is another case in which HH Judge Hacon applied the reasoning of the Supreme Court in  Actavis UK Ltd and others v Eli Lilly and Company   017] Bus LR 1731, [2017] RPC 21, [2017] UKSC 48, the Court of Appeal's in Icescape Limited v Ice-World International BV [2018] EWCA Civ 2219, and his own in Regen Lab SA v Estar Medical Ltd [2019] EWHC 63 (Pat).  I have discussed those cases in The Supreme Court's Judgment in Eli Lilly v Actavis UK Ltd and Others: how to understand it and why it is important 13 July 2017, Patents Icescape Ltd v Ice-World International BV   11 Feb 2019 and Patents - Regen Lab SA v Estar Medical Ltd . 24 Jan 2019 .  He also dis...