NIPC Law

Author Dietary Rabich   Licence CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed   S ource Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Supreme Court  (Lords Hodge, Kitchin, Hamblen, Leggatt and Richards)   Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks   [2023] UKSC 49 (20 Dec 2023) I mentioned the hearing of the appeal from the Court of Appeal's judgment in  Thaler v Comptroller General of Patents Trade Marks And Designs   [2021] RPC 19, [2022] Bus LR 375, [2021] EWCA Civ 1374 in DABUS in the Supreme Court   on 12 April 2023.  On 20 Dec 2023, the Supreme Court dismissed that appeal in  Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Mark s [2023] UKSC 49.  The Court's judgment was delivered by Lord Kitchin. What This Appeal Was Not About In paras [48] and [49] of his judgment, Lord Kitchin said: "[48] The Comptroller has emphasised, correctly in my view, that this appeal is not concerned with the broader question whether technical advances gener...

  Photo showing intermediate age-related macular degeneration Author US National Eye Institute Source Wikipedia Macular Degeneration   Jane Lambert Patents Court (Mr Recorder Campbell)  Master Data Center, Inc v Comptroller   [2020] EWHC 572 (Pat) (11 March 2020) A supplementary protection certificate ("SPC") is an intellectual property right ("IPR") that protects the active ingredients of a pharmaceutical or plant protection product. The IPR comes into being upon the expiry of a patent for the product. SPCs are granted because new pharmaceutical and plant protection products cannot be marketed unless and until they are found to be safe by the relevant national or European authorities. Evaluating the safety of a new drug or plant protection product can take time. As the maximum term of a patent is 20 years the time waiting for such evaluation reduces the effective term of the monopoly. The purpose of an SPC, as Lord Justice Floyd explained i...