NIPC Law

  Jane Lamber t Court of Appeal (Lady Justice Thirwall and Lords Justices Arnold and Birss)  Advanced Bionics AG and  Another v Med-El Elektromedizinische Gerate Gmb H [2023] EWCA Civ 637 (9 June 2023) This was an appeal against Mr Campbell Forsyth KC's revocation of European patent (UK)  3 138 605 entitled "MRI-safe disk magnet for implants"  ("the patent") on grounds of obviousness over  PCT application WO 03/081976 A2 entitled "Reducing Effect of magnetic and electromagnetic fields on an implants magnet and/or electronic" invented by Martin Zimmerling ("Zimmerling") (see Advanced Bionics AG and another v Med-El Elektromedizinische Gerate GmbH [2022] EWHC 1345 (Pat) (1 June 2022)). The defendant, Med-El Elektromedizinische Gerate GmbH, ("Med-El") applied for permission to appeal which was granted by Lord Justice Arnold.  The appeal was heard by Lady Justice Thirwall, Lord Justice Arnold, and Lord Justice Birss on 23 and 24 May 2...

Lord Kitchin* Jane Lambert Supreme Court (Lords Hodge, Kitchin, Hamblen, Leggatt and Richards) Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks 2 March 2023 "DABUS" stands for "Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience". It was created by Dr Stephen L Thaler . who has trained it to invent  a food container  and  devices and enhanced devices and methods for attracting enhanced attention .  Dr Thaler has applied for patents for those inventions in several countries including the UK His applications have been rejected by the European, British and American and most of the world's other patent offices on the ground that an inventor must be a natural person.  The only country in which he has been successful is South Africa (see the South African Patent Journal July 2021 Vol 54 No 07 ). There is a list of Patents and Applications   for those inventions   on The Artificial Inventor Project website. In the United Kingdom, Dr T...

Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Justice Msrcus Smith)  Neurim Pharmaceuticals (1991) Ltd and another v Generics UK Ltd (t/a Mylan) and anothe r [2020] EWHC 1362 (Pat) (3 June 2020) This was an application by Neurim Pharmaceuticals (1991) Ltd. ("Neurim"), the registered proprietor of European patent (UK) number 1441702  and Flynn Pharma Ltd. ("Flynn") the proprietor's exclusive licensee for an interim injunction to restrain until trial or further order the generics manufacturer, Mylan, from taking steps that might infringe that patent.  The application was heard online by Mr Justice Marcus Smith on 20 May 2020. He handed down his judgment on 3 June 2020. The Dispute The claimants manufactured and distributed a product called "Circadin" which is protected by the patent. Mylan has obtained marketing authorization for a generic version of Circadin and cleared one of the obstacles to the launch of its product by obtaining the revocation ...

Standard YouTube Licence Jane Lambert The World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") , European Patent Office ("EPO")  and the Intellectual Property Office ("IPO")  have all published statistics on patenting activity in 2019.  According to the IPO's Facts and figures: Patent, trade mark, design and hearing data: 2019 , the IPO received 19,250 patent applications in 2019 which was down from 20,931 the previous year.  Just over 12,000 of those applications came from the UK compared to 12,843 the previous year.  However, there was a welcome 6.9% increase in the number of applications for European patents (6,156 in 2029 compared to 5,761 in 2018 (see European patent applications ).  There was also modest growth in the number of international patent applications from the UK (5,786 in 2019 compared to 5,634 the year before (see  Annex 1: International patent applications by origin (PCT System) )). The modest increase in the number of internatio...

As I said in How the Intellectual Property Act 2014 changes British Patent Law   21 June 2014 JD Supra, the most important provision of the Intellectual Property Act 2014  is s.17  which inserts a new s.88A into the Patents Act 1977. That section confers power on the Secretary of State to make provision in the UK for the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court . Why is that agreement important? It is because art 1 establishes a court common to almost all the countries of the European Union including the UK for the settlement of disputes relating to European patents and European patents with unitary effect ("Unitary patents").  That court will be known as the Unified Patent Court ("UPC") and it will consist of a Court of First Instance and a Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal will sit in Luxembourg but the Court of First Instance will have a central division with Paris with sections in London and Munich. In addition there will be regional and local divisi...

When I was called to the Bar in 1977 I spent a lot of time studying the Community Patent Convention which of 1975 because I really thought I would need to know about it. Hélas le temps perdu!. I would have spent the time no less profitably in the Seven Stars.  Forty years on, as they sing at Harrow, there are signs that something close to the original concept of the Community patent is about to become a reality. On 17 Dec 2012 the Council of Europe and the European Parliament adopted two short regulations: Regulation (EU) No 1257/2012 of the European Parliament and the Council of 17 December 2012 implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection ; and Regulation (EU) No 1260/2012 of 17 December 2012 implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection with regard to the applicable translation arrangements . These regulations do not establish a Community or EU patent as ...

In its second intellectual property appeal (the first being Lucasfilm v Ainsworth [2011] UKSC 39 see my case note " Lucasfilm v Ansoworth The Supreme Court's First IP Appeal" 31 July 2011 IP/IT Update) the United Kingdom Supreme Court had to consider the way in which the requirement of industrial applicability extends to a patent for biological material. One of the conditions for the grant of a patent in art 52 (1) of the European Patent Convention ( "EPC" ) is that the invention is "susceptible of industrial application." Art 57 further provides that "[a]n invention shall be considered as susceptible of industrial application if it can be made or used in any kind of industry, including agriculture." S.1 (1) (c) and s. 4 (1) of the Patents Act 1977 makes identical provision in respect of British patents. Footnote 5 to art 27 of TRIPS suggests that the term "capable of industrial application" may be deemed by a WTO member as syn...