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...

Author Dori   Public Domain Source Wikimedia Commons   Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Mellor) Mitsubishi Electric Corporation v Oneplus Technology (Shenzhen) Co, Ltd and others [2021] EWHC 1048 (Pat) (26 April 2021) This was a trial to determine whether European patent (UK) 1925142B1  is essential to version 10.0.0 and all subsequent versions of TS36.322 of the 4th generation 3GPP Long-Term Evolution (“LTE’) standard.  The registered proprietor of the patent is SISVEL International S.A which is the second claimant in these proceedings.   The proceedings are part of a wider dispute as to whether the defendants should take a licence from the first claimant's patent pool ("MCP pool") on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory ("FRAND") terms.  As is often the case in FRAND disputes the defendant implementors denied the patent's validity, its essentiality to the standard and that it had been infringed.  They also disputed the fairn...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Nugee)  E Mishan & Sons, Inc (t/a Emson) v Hozelock Ltd and others [2019] EWHC 991 (Pat) (17 April 2019)   This was a claim for the infringement of two patents:   UK patent GB 2 490 276  for an expandable hose assembly and European patent EP 2 687 575  also for an expandable hose assembly. There was a counterclaim for the revocation of those patents on grounds of obviousness and, for a while, anticipation. This action and counterclaim came on before Mr Justice Nugee. The Invention The invention for which those patents were granted was a new type of garden hose. Conventional ones are made of plastic in a number of layers bonded together. They tended to be heavy. bulky and difficult to store.  They also tended to kink.  The invention avoided those difficulties. The inventor, Michael Berardi , made a hose consisting of two tubes, one inside the other.  The i...

Human blood after centrifugation Author  Zuzanna K. Filutowska Licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Source  Wikipedia Jane Lambert Patents Court (HH Judge Hacon)  Regen Lab SA v Estar Medical Ltd and others [2019] EWHC 63 (Pat) (18 Jan  2019) This was a claim by Regen Lab SA  ("Regen") against the Israeli company, Estar Technologies Ltd., and the British companies, Medira Ltd, and Lavender Medical Ltd. for patent infringement.  The defendants counterclaimed for revocation of the patent alleged to have been infringed on grounds of anticipation, obviousness and insufficiency. The Patent The patent alleged to have been infringed was for a method for the preparation of platelet-rich plasma  ("PRP") for unprocessed use and combination thereof with skin and bone cells. It was granted by the European Patent Ofice under publication number EP2073862 . Judge Hacon described the inv...

In    Jarden Consumer Solutions (Europe) Ltd v SEB SA and Another [2014] EWHC 445 (Pat) (28 Feb 2014) Jarden Consumer Solutions (Europe) Ltd ( "Jarden" )  sued SEB SA ( "SEB" )  for the revocation of its  European patent number 2.085,003  ( "the patent" ) for deep fryer with automatic fat coating. SEB counterclaimed for infringement of the patent by importing and selling  the Breville Halo Health fryer . The action came on for trial before Mr Justice Arnold who found that 3 of the claims of the patent were invalid but 3 others were valid and had been infringed. Jarden appealed against the judge's construction of the patent and his finding of infringement. The appeal was heard by Lord Justices Vos and Burnett and Sir Timothy Lloyd in  Jarden Consumer Solutions (Europe) Ltd v SEB SA and Another [2014] EWCA Civ 1629 (17 Dec 2014), The Patent The invention  for which the patent was granted is was summarized by Lord Justice Vos at par...