NIPC Law

Jane Lambert Patents Court (Lord Justice Birss) Facebook Ireland Ltd v Voxer IP LLC [2021] EWHC 657 (Pat) (19 March 2021) In    Eli Lilly v Actavis UK Ltd and others     [2017] Bus LR 1731, [2017] UKSC 48, [2017] RPC 21, the Supreme Court changed the way the courts decide whether a patent claim has been infringed. I discussed that judgment in detail 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. Up to that judgment a patent could be infringed only if a variant fell within the language of a claim. Lord Neuberger referred to that as a "normal construction". After that judgment a patent could be infringed if the variant operated in a manner that was equivalent to the claim.  This was referred to in that case and subsequently as the "doctrine of equivalents". The issue before Lord Justice Birss in  Facebook Ireland Ltd v Voxer IP LLC [2021] EWHC 657 was ...

Sarah Stierch / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Birss)    Facebook Ireland Ltd v Voxer IP LLC [2020] EWHC 1806 (Pat) (7 July 2020) Yesterday, I explained in International Patent Litigation - Nicoventures Trading Ltd v Philip Morris   16 July 2020 that defendants to German patent infringement claims often bring actions to revoke the UK designation of the same European patent because it is not possible to challenge the validity of a patent in infringement proceedings in Germany.  The thinking behind that strategy is the courts in countries that are party to the European Patent Convention take account of each other's decisions on the same patent.  That strategy works, however, only if the UK revocation action is decided before the German infringement one.   To ensure that it does, the court may have to order the expedition of the UK trial as it did in    Nicoventures...