NIPC Law

Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Atnold)   Allergan, Inc and another v Aspire Pharma Ltd [2019] EWHC 1085 (Pat) (3 May 2019)  Allergan Inc  is the proprietor of European patent EP1753434  for an enhanced bimatoprost ophthalmic solution which its English subsidiary, Allergan Ltd. exploits   by marketing a product containing 0.1 mg/ml (0.01%) bimatoprost for ophthalmic administration for the treatment of glaucoma under the trade mark Lumigan 01 mg/ml. Aspire Pharma Ltd and Accord Healthcare Ltd have obtained marketing authorizations to market generic versions of Lumigan 0.1 mg/ml which they do not dispute would infringe the patent. They contend that the patent is invalid on the ground of obviousness or, alternatively insufficiency. S.72 (1) of the Patents Act 1977 provides that the Patents or Intellectual Property Enterprise Court or the Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks may revoke a patent for an i...

Lantana Ltd . ( "Lantana" ) is a California company that offers communication cable services, telephone systems and services and computer and data network services mainly to customers in Southern California . One of the company's employees invented a "method, systems, and computer program products for retrieving a file of machine readable data" for which Lantana applied for patents in the USA and around the world under the Patent Co-operation Treaty. The Invention  The invention is described in the abstract of the application as follows: "A user, wishing to retrieve a file of machine-readable data from a remote machine-readable data storage device, transmits a first e-mail message from a local station to a remote station via a packet switched network. The first e-mail message includes a first machine-readable instruction and a first machine-readable retrieval criterion. The remote station receives the first e-mail message from the packet ...